The end from the beginning.

Let's say that somebody asks you this: "Why are You you?" What makes you who you are?

Most of us look back and think of some major event in our lives that caused us to look at life a little differently. Or perhaps we think of a time where we challenged ourselves to do something differently and have stuck with it ever since. Maybe somebody said something that made us question ourselves into a lifestyle change. I've found that for most people they look back at some kind of traumatic event in their life. It's interesting that for most people they would think of that, because aren't traumatic events supposed to be unpleasant?

I always look back to when my parents split. My world was shattered into a thousand pieces. I didn't know what to think or what to feel. As my parents had been the foundation of my testimony, I didn't even know for sure what to believe in for the next few years. Put simply, everything about my life changed in about one short month.

Not knowing the end from the beginning is hard. As a 14 year old I didn't know why I was being put through that experience. I kept waiting to wake up and for somebody to come in a tell me it was all a big joke. But as is always the case I didn't wake up. I had to face the fact that my previously perfect family was now broken. And I didn't have a clue where we were heading, if we were heading anywhere at all.

I look back at the time about a year after we moved. I still consider that time to be the low-point of my entire life. You know that super awkward, gawky kid with no social skills, braces, unkempt, and still growing into his body? Yeah, that was me. And the people around me let me know it. But I didn't know how to pull myself out of that. I had enough personal issues to deal with at the time. Again, simply put, my life was a mess. I remember sobbing to my Mom that I wasn't socially acceptable to my friends and that I had nothing going for me. I didn't know anything for certain at that point in time.

So you understand what it was like to feel that way. It wasn't a happy time for me.

I wish I could have seen what I'm about to describe next at that point in time.

Fast forward three years to May 2007. I'm walking up the stand to get my graduation certificate. The drumline just gave me a special salute for being a graduating percussion senior. I just learned all percussion instruments in a year, and worked myself into the regional orchestra as the second chair. My girlfriend and her family are in the stands cheering. My "adopted family" is there wondering how it was possible that I made it there. Not only that, but I have so many great and wonderful friends who I spend way too much time with and have way too much fun with. It was such a great moment. I was getting ready to head out to BYU the next fall. The only downside was that I had to leave Arizona about two weeks after that. But I suddenly realized that I actually had life going for me.

Fast forward another three years to June 10th, 2010, at 12:30 p.m.. I'm walking off a plane, having just finished my mission. Sure I'm missing Ohio more than anything else in my life at that point, but I see my family walking down the corridor towards me. I realize that it was the end of two amazing years away from home. I remember the overwhelming feeling that my sacrifice was accepted by the Lord. Sure it wasn't a perfect mission. But I did what the Lord sent me to do. I felt so confident that I could handle whatever the world decided to throw my way. I was ready to really get into college and finish what I had started there.

If only that 14 year old boy could have seen what I have.

People getting divorced is not a good thing. But here's what gives me pause and makes me think.

Ask me sometime. If I could go back and change things so that Mom and Dad would have stayed together, would I? Would I save a marriage? Sounds like a good idea right? But then I always wonder, "What would happen to me if I were to do that?"

Would I have turned out completely different as a person? Would it really have helped out in the first place? Those experiences as a child are what made me who I am today. Who would I be? I very much doubt I would be anything like I am now. Perhaps that would be a good thing. But I think I am who I am for a reason, even though I don't know what that is. I don't know if I would go back and change things back then. Fact is, I'm happy with my life right now. I'm going to college and I'm loving it. I love learning new things and I love the challenges involved. I have great roommates and great friends. I know that this church is true and what I believe in because of two years spent in Cleveland (of all places!). I have a beautiful girlfriend who always makes me happy just when I see her. My family still hasn't fixed itself yet, but again, who knows? Maybe they can have the same thing happen to them as did for me.

So I wonder: how did I get so lucky? What's down the road 10 years from now? Where do I want to be? And will I be able to see the end from the beginning when life gets hard?

We never know where life is going to take us. All I know is that as long as we ride the storms and take life's challenges one step at a time and, most importantly, trust the Lord to take care of what we cannot, we'll always land on our feet.

And if life still has something to offer me, like more chances at bettering myself and my life...I'm taking it. I can't change the past, but I wouldn't anyway.