Three days.

I woke up with the words looping throughout my brain like a steam engine on a set of toy tracks:

THREE DAYS THREE DAYS THREE DAYS THREE DAYS THREE DAYS THREE DAYS

It can’t be real. The way I see it, it feels so much smaller than a real train. Well, yes, it has a set of wheels that move and cars that link together and it even runs on real steam. Yes, perhaps it’s as real a train as any. I just thought it’d look bigger.

I thought I’d feel bigger. Feel more like a missionary. Perhaps I’d grow a hard, flat rectangular patch of skin below my shoulder, like the nametag was already a part of me. Or my tongue would just roll its own r’s. Or maybe even I’d find myself above things like laughing over bodily functions and teasing my sister about her 3-barrel crimper.

But life feels as close to normal as anyone might guess. Sunburns still burn. Swimming’s still fun. I still laugh loudly at stupid things. Knee-length dresses are still appealing. I still make myself read the scriptures each morning—it doesn’t just happen without my thinking about it and they have yet to become an extension of my right arm.

First this frightens me, just slightly. It is frightening because a small part of me imagines that desires contrary to the immortal white handbook should be extinguished as distractions. It is frightening because my romanticizing self thinks that good missionaries have only one thought.

It is frightening because what if I’m not enough?

And then it’s humbling. It’s inspiring. Because what kind of offering would I be making if I gave up only the things that meant nothing to me? What kind of mission is it if none of it stretches me? It’s not a stretch at all if it doesn’t hurt. What kind of missionary would I be if I didn’t have to physically pick the nametag up off the dresser and clip it on every morning? If I had no room to become anything different than the girl I already am?

We are given the law of sacrifice—a gift, if we could only see it as such. It is for us, for becoming, for greater joy.

If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it. For what is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?

Before me--before all of us!--is the glorious opportunity to let the Lord move through me. I've spent a lifetime learning to feel His pulse through the ferocity of my own. And the less I think of my own life, the more alive I feel. I'm beginning to get at the stuff that’s deep in the very core of me, to recognize myself for who I really am and the world around me for what it really is. As I learn to discern the light and color that’s all around me and within me, I realize that there's divinity in everything. And I find that divinity coursing through my veins, pulling me in high directions. He’s in me. He's in us.

So the living begins.

And my purpose as a missionary is to live so hard and so well that it’s contagious. GAH!