Fredericksburg

Why am I crying?

(You can’t just sit on the third floor of the English building all alone on a cold Friday, in your pink tennis shoes and brown Grand Teton hat, and just start crying. The two other people up here are clearly uncomfortable. Stop it. I didn’t even mean to click on the picture. I was trying to find something else. My finger just darted out and hit the “Fredericksburg” folder. And now I’m crying. And, of course, “Wherever I Go” from the National Parks just had to come up on the playlist at this exact moment. Ugh.)

Not from sadness.

Not from regret.

Not from longing.

Not from pain.

From gratitude—

The kind of (absolute) gratitude that makes you gasp on the inside. It makes you get all quiet and respectful on the inside. Remembering that Someone that spectacular could have made so much happened for someone as unspectacular as you—it makes you quiet on the inside.

Everything spinning around in there stops. All the heads inside my head raise and stare in (absolute) respect for something so (absolutely) Holy. Like attendees at a funeral as the casket is carried down the aisle. There is no checking a phone or whispering to a friend, there is only silence—stilling respect for what’s in front of, and inside of, you.

Not for numbers.

Not for positions.

Not for names.

Not for posts.

For Him—

I am gaspingly grateful for the names, but the numbers were probably average. Nothing I did in Virginia was that out of the ordinary. I tried everyday to be my best, but a lot of dreams went unrealized. Stress never really went away, sweat never really dried, and all the disappointment never seemed fair. Isn’t it always our purest desires that provide the most pain when they are absent?

The gap between these paragraphs is intentional. There are real people with real names that might read this, and I’m scared to tell them how hard it really was. The frustrating part of trying to describe my mission is that I really can’t talk about it. Not the details that make my gratitude so alarmingly real. But I must talk about Fredericksburg. Everything came full circle Fredericksburg. For me, there is a lot more there now than just American history. There is deep, spiritual history. Who knew how much hurt could be unraveled in just three weeks?

But first we need to back up to the beginning. Everyone seems to find a mission mentor; that one sister or elder that looks like everything you hope to be as a missionary. I met Sister Garrigues when she was my sister training leader two months into my mission. I was completely star-struck after spending a day street contacting downtown with her. To this day I remember how she seemed to care so much about every person we talked to. All I wanted was to grow up to be like her.

Later that week, all the missionaries in the area (probably about fifty of us) gathered for a conference. I remember Sister Garrigues standing up to make a comment during a discussion. I have no idea what she said, but I remember vividly what our mission president said when she sat back down:

“When Sister Garrigues talks, I expect you all to listen. She is a missionary who knows how to baptize.”

I’m sure my eyes were as big as they were when as a five-year-old I stared at the big girls sparkling toe shoes at my ballet recital. One day, that would be me. One day, President Smith would say that about me.

So, I tried. I tried so hard to emulate everything I’d seen Sister Garrigues do. And I quickly learned that one frustrating aspect of missionary life is that you never know if you’re doing enough. At least in school you get a grade rating your efforts. Out there you just keeping trying and, at least in my case, agonize over if it’s enough. Through it all, I never forgot President Smith’s praise for Sister Garrigue at the conference.

I really don’t think I wanted the praise so that other people would hear it. All I wanted in the world was to “become a great benefit to my fellow beings” (Mosiah 8:18), and because I really trusted my mission president, I really trusted what he said. His words of advice meant so much to me, so I worked for a moment like the one Sister Garrigue had had at the conference.

Fast forward through the rest of my mission to Fredericksburg. Again, I feel like I can’t include a lot of the details because these are real people. But just believe me when I say that all the “wrongs” I felt had happened to me during my mission where turned into gold.

I made the choice to extend my mission an extra transfer (6 weeks) before my sister Amy received her mission call. Her assigned departure date had us missing each other by just three weeks. When I found that out, I was sad but set in my decision to stay in Virginia until August. I told President Smith about it, and he suggested that I pray about going home early to see her. Long story short, I felt that I needed to go home and see Amy. I needed to tell her that missions are so hard. I needed to tell her that it would be worth it. I promised the Lord I would give it everything those three weeks, and then get back to Amy.

As transfer calls approached, we thought for sure President Smith would send us another companion and we would be a trio for three weeks before I left. That way nothing would be interrupted. I would just slip out.

*you poor thing chuckle here* Yeah, that didn’t happen. Fredericksburg happened. A set of elders left the ward and I replaced them with TWO companions who both needed their training finished. What??

A sum up of Fredericksburg in four sentences (because those three weeks are a post themselves): Sister Dunn and Sanchez were angels. Angels sent from a loving Father who knew a daughter needed what they had. Jessica Hope was an angel. She accepted the invitation to join God’s family and was baptized the day after I flew home.

All of that is so important to me, but it isn’t what makes me gasp inside.

My last day in the mission field was a Thursday. The plan was for the kind member who had offered to drive me the hour down to the mission home in Richmond to pick me up immediately after our dinner appointment. We transferred my luggage into her car, I hugged Dunn and Sanchez hard, and we drove away.

Once in Richmond, I met up with President and Sister Smith and they took me to Bruster’s ice cream. The office missionaries met us there. I felt so special. President Smith frequently taught us the importance of urgency in the Lord’s work. So, the fact that he thought sitting down and enjoying ice cream with me was a good use of time was very flattering.

At one point during my peanut butter sundae, President Smith turned to me and asked me to “share my wisdom” with the group. I don’t think I said anything that eloquent, but I did try to tell him how much Fredericksburg meant to me. I told him how’d I’d asked Heavenly Father if I could show Sister Dunn and Sanchez how to get someone to baptism, and how it had actually happened.

One rule all missionaries live by is that we always sleep in the same room as another missionary. So that meant that after our ice cream I went to stay the night with some other sisters at their house nearby. I knew three of the four sisters living there and loved them. One of the sets of sisters were the training leaders for the area. And because it just happened to be a Thursday, they would be on a conference call with all the missionary leaders that night. When President Smith’s assistants had finished their business on the call, they gave him some time to speak if he was on the line. He was on the line. And I had my moment.

He said that he had just come home from spending time with “Sister Abel” and that it had made him grateful. Grateful to be in a mission that has missionaries who really finish. Missionaries that finish strong. He went on about me for a while and the sisters in the room with me looked at me the way I must have looked at Sister Garrigue.

It was one of those times when I felt like I should have burst into tears, but all I could do was be quiet. I was so quiet inside.

I was quiet because the Savior knew. He knew the quiet pleadings of my heart. He knew how much what President Smith was saying meant to me. The Savior was telling me it was enough. For the first time my mission felt complete. I had finished the work He sent me forth to do. The Savior’s love is so real. And so, I was very quiet.

So actually, I know exactly why I’m crying. And I hope I don’t ever forget.