Week 19: A Blessing and a Wedding from like a Year Ago
Dear Loved Ones,
I wish there had been something happy or uplifting to write about this week, but I've got nothing. So instead, I'm going to talk about one of the most meaningful experiences of my life. I'm coming up on the anniversary of it, so it's been on my mind.
One year ago, I was in London in the middle of a ten day fever. I was there on a study abroad and I thought I had signed up for international health insurance, but I couldn't find my health insurance information and I didn't know where to go for a doctor even if I had it. I was working while I was there and divided my time between class, homework, an online internship, and running around the city seeing everything important go me. I didn't take time to rest and recoup.
There were two things I had been wanting desperately at that time: one was that I could go on a mission. One was that I could go to the royal wedding.
That week, I added a third thing. I wanted to get better.
Before I was a missionary, I worked as a research assistant to a folklore professor who studies fairy tale adaptations in television. Meghan Markle once portrayed Sleeping Beauty in an episode of murder mystery drama Castle. When I mentioned this to my boss, she had me write a blog post about connections between fairy tale and real royal weddings. That post became the basis of a short presentation at an academic conference at Utah State University and a longer one at a conference in LA.
Everybody needs something outside of themselves to focus on. Something that's going right. If you're having a bad day, but your team wins the game of the week or your favorite politician passes a law you like, it's all okay. My other thing was royalty. Whenever I feared that I would be banned from serving a mission again, I would recite my presentation to myself, the way people are always told to recite scriptures or hum hymns to chase away bad thoughts. Those methods didn't work for me, but thinking about Meghan Markle did.
Mostly, she was just something to focus on, and I could've felt a similar peace if I had trained myself to fixate on an athlete or politician. But she also represents second chances.
Meghan Markle was divorced, which must have been hard and sad, and then she married a prince. And Prince Harry lost his mother, which was hard and sad, and then he grew up and married a glamorous American actress and humanitarian. If they could get their happily ever after, so could I.
I needed to go to that wedding to convince myself I could go on a mission. But my study abroad program had a field trip to Oxford scheduled that day, so there was a schedule conflict and permission conflict. I thought of sneaking away and going on my own, but then I got sick.
I asked some of the guys in my study abroad group to give me a priesthood blessing of healing. One of them was Daniel, our TA. In this blessing, Daniel told me that God was aware of my joy and he promised that this trip and my life would turn out more like what I had planned. I took that to mean I would somehow be able to go to the wedding, and after that, I would go on a mission.
The next day, my professor gave me and a friend permission to go to the wedding. I was still running a fever. But on the morning of May 19th, I woke up and my fever had broken! I know that was of God and not just a natural end to my sickness because my fever hadn't been the slightest bit better the night before.
And then I got to go on a mission. My stake president informed me of my two-transfer call on October 12, 2018, the day Prince Harry's cousin, Princess Eugenie, got married. Naturally, I was devastated that after all my years of working and waiting, I was only getting a two-transfer call, not the real thing. I watched the entirety of Eugenie's wedding on YouTube to give myself something to focus on that weekend.
My life keeps intersecting with this family in weird ways. I also befriended, via social media, a first cousin once removed to the queen about a month before my mission. She still emails me sometimes.
Anyway, when I was in waiting to hear whether or not I'd be allowed to serve, I would tell myself, "If I could get permission to go to this wedding, I'm going to be allowed to go on a mission." You need success on one front to believe you can have one on any other.
This has been a rough week, so I'm leaning on the fact that Meg and Harry have Baby Archie now. If you had told me a year ago that in May 2020, I'd have watched this wedding, served five months of a mission, and they'd have a baby, I would have been so ecstatic that I wouldn't have known what else to wish for.
Sometimes, the best way to stay happy in a hard today is to remember that your today is your yesterday's tomorrow and look at all the tomorrow-wishes that have come true. That blessing gave me hope that I could have a brighter future, both in the short term, trivial things, like my health and the wedding and getting my biggest wish of all.
Love you all!
I wish there had been something happy or uplifting to write about this week, but I've got nothing. So instead, I'm going to talk about one of the most meaningful experiences of my life. I'm coming up on the anniversary of it, so it's been on my mind.
One year ago, I was in London in the middle of a ten day fever. I was there on a study abroad and I thought I had signed up for international health insurance, but I couldn't find my health insurance information and I didn't know where to go for a doctor even if I had it. I was working while I was there and divided my time between class, homework, an online internship, and running around the city seeing everything important go me. I didn't take time to rest and recoup.
There were two things I had been wanting desperately at that time: one was that I could go on a mission. One was that I could go to the royal wedding.
That week, I added a third thing. I wanted to get better.
Before I was a missionary, I worked as a research assistant to a folklore professor who studies fairy tale adaptations in television. Meghan Markle once portrayed Sleeping Beauty in an episode of murder mystery drama Castle. When I mentioned this to my boss, she had me write a blog post about connections between fairy tale and real royal weddings. That post became the basis of a short presentation at an academic conference at Utah State University and a longer one at a conference in LA.
Everybody needs something outside of themselves to focus on. Something that's going right. If you're having a bad day, but your team wins the game of the week or your favorite politician passes a law you like, it's all okay. My other thing was royalty. Whenever I feared that I would be banned from serving a mission again, I would recite my presentation to myself, the way people are always told to recite scriptures or hum hymns to chase away bad thoughts. Those methods didn't work for me, but thinking about Meghan Markle did.
Mostly, she was just something to focus on, and I could've felt a similar peace if I had trained myself to fixate on an athlete or politician. But she also represents second chances.
Meghan Markle was divorced, which must have been hard and sad, and then she married a prince. And Prince Harry lost his mother, which was hard and sad, and then he grew up and married a glamorous American actress and humanitarian. If they could get their happily ever after, so could I.
I needed to go to that wedding to convince myself I could go on a mission. But my study abroad program had a field trip to Oxford scheduled that day, so there was a schedule conflict and permission conflict. I thought of sneaking away and going on my own, but then I got sick.
I asked some of the guys in my study abroad group to give me a priesthood blessing of healing. One of them was Daniel, our TA. In this blessing, Daniel told me that God was aware of my joy and he promised that this trip and my life would turn out more like what I had planned. I took that to mean I would somehow be able to go to the wedding, and after that, I would go on a mission.
The next day, my professor gave me and a friend permission to go to the wedding. I was still running a fever. But on the morning of May 19th, I woke up and my fever had broken! I know that was of God and not just a natural end to my sickness because my fever hadn't been the slightest bit better the night before.
And then I got to go on a mission. My stake president informed me of my two-transfer call on October 12, 2018, the day Prince Harry's cousin, Princess Eugenie, got married. Naturally, I was devastated that after all my years of working and waiting, I was only getting a two-transfer call, not the real thing. I watched the entirety of Eugenie's wedding on YouTube to give myself something to focus on that weekend.
Anyway, when I was in waiting to hear whether or not I'd be allowed to serve, I would tell myself, "If I could get permission to go to this wedding, I'm going to be allowed to go on a mission." You need success on one front to believe you can have one on any other.
This has been a rough week, so I'm leaning on the fact that Meg and Harry have Baby Archie now. If you had told me a year ago that in May 2020, I'd have watched this wedding, served five months of a mission, and they'd have a baby, I would have been so ecstatic that I wouldn't have known what else to wish for.
Sometimes, the best way to stay happy in a hard today is to remember that your today is your yesterday's tomorrow and look at all the tomorrow-wishes that have come true. That blessing gave me hope that I could have a brighter future, both in the short term, trivial things, like my health and the wedding and getting my biggest wish of all.
Love you all!
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