Moments.

This morning Ryan said something as he walked out the door that almost jolted me
out of my socks and made me cry at the same time.
I officially graduate from my beloved BYU in five weeks.

When Ryan and I walked for graduation in August, I almost had to drag Ryan to it. Not really, but pretty close. Ryan is not hot on things that are done purely for the sake of sentiment. [: I on the other hand could not be more into that kind of stuff. I love the symbolism and the reflection these kinds of things bring. I was stoked for the ceremonies and the pictures and the celebrating, and I could not be more smug when President Worthen said in his commencement address, "We go through ceremonies to symbolize finishing a stage in our life and moving on to the next." There, my opinion has been endorsed by the Pres. And I couldn't have put it better myself.

I love thinking about the stages of life, the things that contributed to each experience, and the people who have helped me through them. The weeks leading up to our wedding, I was cleaning out my room for my sister to move in, and I loved doing it. I had stacks and stacks of papers, flyers, planners, notebooks, and other random things from junior high and high school under my desk in there. I savored looking at each thing. I found things that were happy-sad, things I had totally forgot about, things that made me laugh, and a whole notebook that my friends Danielle and David and I drew doodles and wrote notes in during the most boring class of high school, political science. I found my old planners with events like homecoming, prom, movie nights at David's, big exams, birthdays, trips, and the like. I found 12-page essays that at the moment made my ninth grade self feel like throwing up with stress... and now look where I am. Look how little that mattered. But at the moment it mattered so much. I like finding those things again. They pull a bunch of other memories into my mind along with them, and they make me so grateful.

Writing thank-you notes after our wedding was the same deal. Although I had to write almost 400 of them, writing each one was an opportunity to think about the people who had helped both Ryan and I along the path to our temple marriage, the best and happiest blessing ever. It was, in a word, humbling. I couldn't express my gratitude enough and how deeply humbled I was. I couldn't NOT write those cards. There was no way. I had to. To shrug off the task would be so ungrateful.

To me, graduation was the same way. The convocation and commencement ceremonies, to me, represented recognition of both us students and the people who had helped us along the path. To not participate would be, in my mind, ungrateful. And boy am I grateful for the four years I've spent here. I'm really ready to not ever have homework again, but at the same time I'm almost desperately grasping at these last moments I'll have as a BYU student. My last time doing this, seeing that, studying in this spot...

Life is so complex and deep. There are so many moments that make it up. I love those moments. I'm so grateful for them.
I guess that's why I blog.