If I had grown up here...

this is the room I would have wanted to be mine.

My parents are currently serving a mission and this is one of the rooms in their house. I love the window. I love that I can sit on the bed and look out the window. As long as I can remember, I have liked feeling connected. And as a kid, sitting on this bed, looking out this window, I would have felt connected. Connected to the world, connected to the people driving by, connected to the people I felt far away from. I remember several times in life when I longed to feel connected. Not because I was alone, but because something I loved had come and gone and I longed to keep it close. I remember going to EFY, a church program where I went away from home for 2 weeks and got to meet other kids my age from all across the country. As I spent every hour with them learning and serving and playing and coming to understand the gospel and myself, they became my friends. I remember my parents picking me up and driving away looking out the window, sad that I would never see them again because most of them lived too far away. They had become a part of me and I wanted to keep them close. The first while back at home I would sit on my front porch, staring at the mountains, watching the cars that past, wanting to feel connected...closer...to those dear friends I had just made. There were other times I felt this way, but the one that stands out the most was graduating from High School. Wow. What a time! I loved my High School years. Each one brought something different and I learned so much about who I was and who I wanted to be. I had many dear friends that helped me along the way, taught me, loved me and became a part of the person I am today. These relationships changed my life forever. I remember the morning after graduation. I had been at a friends house and partied most the night and came home with that weird, lack of sleep, am I real, type of feeling. So I slept. Then I woke up and didn't really know what to do with myself. Life had changed. It was time to be a grown up, go to college, work and decide what to do with myself as a single, young adult. There was a deep void inside me. A longing to make time stand still so I didn't have to move forward. I was excited for this new stage of life and to grow up and be an adult...but I didn't want to leave behind the people that meant so much to me. So I sat on my front porch. I stared at the mountains and the people driving by. I thought of my friends, the life I had been given. I thought of my childhood and teenage years and all the life I had lived. It had been awesome. And I knew it would probably only get better. Sitting on my porch somehow made me feel a part of this world and closer to the people that I loved. It gave me that connection that I always liked to have. As I sat in my parents house this morning, in the room with the bed next to the window, I felt connected. Connected to the world around me. Connected to the people I love. 

Connected to my childhood. And I felt happy.