Hope and Wait

This semester has been unreal. I can't believe how quickly it came and now it is almost gone. Looking back, I remember how I felt before school started. I was worried to start up again. The seven-week break had been my first break without school since I was twelve-years-old. I had forgotten what it had felt like to take a step back, to slow down. It was kind of frightening to me actually because slowing down meant that I would have to deal with things that I was afraid of. Constantly going meant that I could put on this facade that everything was just fine and dandy, that I had direction in my life, that I had gotten over things from the past.

However, this summer I decided to dedicate myself to figuring out what the Lord wanted me to do. I try really hard to do this constantly. I don't want it to be an event, rather a process of constantly altering my plan to fit His. But this was going to be one time where I was going to work on getting organized and planned for the next year or two because when school started again I didn't want to have any doubt that what I was doing was right. I worked really hard and WAITED , yet, as the beginning of the semester approached, I still hadn't received an answer. I didn't know what He wanted me to do. I needed reassurance that I was still going in the right direction but nothing had really come. I felt discouraged because I had HOPED so badly that it would come. I began to feel discouraged and frightened. I didn't want to go back to BYU-Idaho not knowing what I was supposed to do. If I should transfer, change my major or continue and just graduate earlier than I had anticipated. Because I felt that there were so many unknowns, I was thinking about deferring, more out of fear than anything else. I remember the night before I was to return to school I asked my uncle and grandpa for a Priesthood blessing. It felt so AMAZING to have the ability to do that! I can't even remember when I last had the Priesthood available to me in my home. I felt so much peace. I remembered that faith and fear cannot co-exist. I had been sort of living in fear of the future when I thought I was putting my faith in Heavenly Father. I was not totally giving everything to Him and trusting in His timing. I realized that I need to rely on Him and wait for the answer to come. As I was doing what I was supposed to be doing by keeping the commandments and focusing on righteous endeavors, He will let me know if I start to veer off of the course outlined for me.

Then I started to think about the process itself. Yes, I worked really hard. There is no doubt. But there was also a lot of hoping and waiting. I remembered something I had discovered as I was reading my scriptures the previous semester: to wait and to hope is the same word in Spanish-- esperar. I had known this but I guess I just thought that it was coincidence. Then I started to wonder if to wait and to hope are really the same thing. I mean, if you are waiting does that mean that you still have hope? When we are waiting for an answer, an epiphany, or anything really, is it something that we are really hoping will come? And if we are really hoping for it, what are we willing to do for it?