Old World

This was one of those weird weeks you have every now and then were everything is at once the best and also kind of the worst. 

I was in London for most of it and had a super productive trip. As has tended to be the case with these site visits, I come away feeling really REALLY good at my job. We're close enough now that I'm starting to wake up in the middle of the night imagining the entire rowing team is eight feet tall and we'll have nothing to fit them but for the most part, the Games could start tomorrow and we could likely pull it off. 

I managed to squeeze in dinner with my old SLOC friends who are working for the organizing committee which was awfully nice. And in a surprising turn, a sorority sister from SUU who I haven't seen in 14 years and who I didn't realize was living in London contacted me on Facebook and we had lunch one day. She was a baby freshman when I was a senior and I'm certain our little Cedar City selves would have fallen over dead to see us in our heels and scarves sitting in a pub in SoHo and catching each other up on our interesting resumes. 

Great trip all around, I have no caveats. 2012 has been a nonstop thrill ride and it's only going to get cooler. I'll be in New York for a week in April for our big 100 days out celebration in Times Square and then I get to spend 10 days in June watching people make the 2012 Track and Field team over and over. You will be hard pressed to find someone having a more interesting and exciting few months at work. 

So it makes sense that I cried on the plane most of the way home right? 

I was over tired already and made the mistake of watching several romantic comedies and the result was that I completely broke down when Ryan Gosling does the "Dirty Dancing" move with Emma Stone and it unleashed this overwhelming fear that I have done the order of things terribly terribly wrong. It did not help when I went to a St. Patrick's Day party yesterday that one of my coworkers threw and I was definitely the only single person there and one of only a very small handful who wasn't chasing after a couple of kidlets. I used to be comforted by the fact that it was just my LDS friends who had babies when they were themselves were babies and that out in the real world, there was plenty of time to get to that part of my list. But last night I looked around and all the dads of all the two year old had grey hair and it was just all a little bit too much. 

Just to be clear-I love my life and I am able to make lists and lists of things I am thankful for every night before I go to bed. And inevitably, it feels embarrassing to follow those lists with any kind of "hey could I maybe meet a nice boy soon?" prayer because I've already got more than my share of good things in my life. But guys, being alone. can get. exhausting. And being eternally optimistic about being the single one can also be exhausting too. I hate hate hate the word lonely because it seems like such a stupid thing to admit to when I have so many great people in my life but sometimes what you really want is someone to get the damn tires rotated because I'm just never going to remember to do that. 

So today I was feeling extra alone at church and I was scrolling through Instagram (which I shouldn't be doing but raise your hand if you have never played with your phone during sacrament meeting and I'll say you lie) and came upon this quote: 

"God sees you not only as a mortal being on a small planet who lives for a brief season-He sees you as His child. He sees you as the being you are capable of and designed to become. He wants you to know that you matter to Him." 

Pretty simple little quote and something I've known pretty much since I was born but it came along at just the right moment and reminded me that I'm a) not as alone as it feels sometimes and b) that everything I have always believed about timelines is totally true. There isn't a schedule, I'm not behind. It doesn't mean it's not sometimes really scary and that I'm not going to keep worrying about it. But it's nice to have these moments of clarity I can go back to when I'm terrified that I'm going to have to compete harder for Favorite Aunt status so someone will come visit me in the rest home someday. 

So thanks Instagram friend of a friend I can't quite remember why I'm following. I needed that. 

p.s.

if you haven't seen the Dirty Dancing bit from "Crazy Stupid Love", it's pretty awesome. And it would totally work.