A Sigh of Relief

Yesterday was a good day. As much as I dislike fasting, and especially fasting when I haven’t planned for at least a day in advance to go hungry, and even more especially fasting on a day other than the first Sunday of the month (just because it means I will have to fast multiple times within a less-than-four-week period), I realized yesterday morning before I ate breakfast that I really needed to do it. I rebelled at the thought at first, but by the time I’d showered and gathered my thoughts and prepared myself psychologically, I was ready.

So I fasted and prayed and read my scriptures and tried to pay attention in all the church meetings and talked to my family and went to the CES fireside and confided in my roommate and got a priesthood blessing. Basically, I did everything I was supposed to do.

And after all of that, I had a thought.

I don’t know if the thought was inspired, but I have to think that if it came at the conclusion of all the right things I had been trying to do all day there might have been something to it. And the fact that the thought made me suddenly, wonderfully happy adds to my evidence that the thought was not just my own. I continued to think about it while running this morning, and then went and talked to a professor this afternoon, and then made a nice, life-complicating decision by adding a fourth 3-credit class to my schedule (which is a big deal in a doctoral program).

Spur-of-the-moment decisions are scary sometimes, especially when they’re decisions you could easily regret a couple months down the line and therefore should be approached with much thought and prayer and discussion with other knowledgeable people. Unfortunately I didn’t have the time for that. The class has already met once, and there are seven (yup, seven) articles to read before they meet again on Thursday, and since Tuesday and Wednesday are my busy days I just couldn’t afford to put off the decision even for a few hours if I hoped to be able to get everything done.

Surprisingly (or perhaps not so surprisingly) adding this class has actually decreased the feelings of panic in my life. In fact, I feel a lot calmer about everything now that I’ve done this. I feel happier about where I am and what I’m doing and what I might be doing in the future.

I still have decisions to work through, but the questions and problems that I’ve been so worried about (at least the academic ones) now have foreseeable solutions.

And other things are good, too. I'm going to a ward-member-initiated FHE tonight (our normal FHE activities consist of Sunday firesides). My roommate put magnetic poetry on our refrigerator, something I've wanted since I was in high school. I'm actually cooking something for dinner tonight (not-quite-authentic Cajun red beans and rice). Apples are really, really good here. I gave in and bought a round loaf of Great Harvest honey whole wheat bread and they had extra loaves of cheddar cheese bread that they were just giving away for free. All the repairs on our apartment have been completed, meaning I now have a working mail key, closet doors, and blinds on my bedroom windows. And I look good in every single one of the family reunion pictures that I got in the mail on Saturday.

Now it's time to just smile and enjoy the fall.