Andrew Aja

From the beginning, I admired Andrew's passion and enthusiastic dedication to his individual moral development. He holds an evident commitment to the truths he holds dear and close observation would show how his love for his Father in Heaven affects his interactions with his fellow men.

On a more intimate note, I found in Andrew a disapproval of wrong or immoral behavior that I could closely relate to. I think that, in many ways, Andrew taught me to see and identify a problem I have struggled with throughout my life. Having been the only Mormon in my high school, I have always had a difficulty distinguishing between the way I feel about my friends and their personal lifestyle decisions; which often seemed to be at odds with my personal standards and strict code of conduct. I had a troublesome time trying to differentiate between my love for them and my love/approval of their actions. In many ways, I shared in the passion to do what I thought was right in the same way as Andrew. However, as a result of that passion to uphold the beliefs and standards I found to be true, I often disregarded the feelings and respect towards my close friends. We often seemed to be at odds with one another. And as a result, I lost the trust of many good friends who had been offended by my enthusiastic personal plight for righteousness.

Andrew, in his own personal crusade to become the best version of himself and to do what whatsoever is agreeable in the eyes of God, taught me to put God's will above all else. After all, God, the Creator of all men and of all things on earth, would want only the best for all of them. I am an strong believer that God loves us each individually and equally wants to see us all develop and grow in this mortality. I know that He is our Father and as a Father loves us and wants nothing but our best.

This may seem like a tangent away from what I've learned from Andrew; but it's all very intricately connected. Andrew's passion taught me that my passion to do right was something honorable and in finding so, I was able to forgive the mistakes I made in my interactions with my friends in high school. And in forgiving myself, I am now able to move forward...Moving forward allowed me to understand how God loves us each of us in spite of how much he disapproves of our wrong choices. He continues to love us and guide us, although he does not condone our wrong behaviors. I indirectly learned through my interactions with Andrew that I can be disapproving of behavior, while still loving the individual. It isn't because somebody upsets me that I should be judgmental. I should continuously love them; and that love alone is the driving force is bringing about change.

On another note, I found a brother in Andrew. Someone who shared my love for blues and for reading. An English major, I would often find Andrew reading one book or another. I admire his drive to learn and to analyze the little things in poetry and in short stories. This often translated into his attention and care for the little things in everyday life. I am blessed, still today to enjoy Andrew's daily acts of charity, generosity, and concern for his friends. As Andrew remains an active participant in my life, I expect to continuously learn from him and from his unique perspective on life.

First Take: European Project

So now that I am back from my European adventure, I have been pondering a method in which I can keep alive the memory and the experience. Not that I wish to dwell on the past by any means, but rather so I could remember the wonderful people and lessons I have learned. My project plan goes as follows:

Over the next couple of posts, I intend to focus on one of the people who I went to Europe with. In order to keep it random, I plan on addressing each of the 50 people on this trip based on alphabetical order. I will address my peers first, and then I will move on to the instructors and their wives. I do not, in any way, intend to advertise my posts to the group I went to Europe with, it's purely for my own reflection as I truly believe each and every person blessed my life and changed me for the better.

I believe God puts people in our lives in order to teach us something. I believe it would be ungrateful for me to forget the way each individual changed my life. Grant it, it is expected that some people would naturally leave a larger impression than others as I got the opportunity to get to know certain people better than others. However, I could not be more grateful for each person who came along on this trip and I truly believe this specific group of people were chosen on basis of inspiration.

Here I go.

There but for the grace of God, go I.

Today I almost quit. I stared into the mirror and wondered if I should just give up and if it wasn't time to go home. When I considered this, fear entered my heart and I wondered about what the past held for me. My answer may seem obvious to most, but to me, it took a moment to recognize.

Last semester in devotional I heard somebody teach that in life it was impossible to return to a moment before any experience. You could never go back to a state of mind or a lifestyle that you had in the past because you could never forget or undo an experience. As I said, this may seem obvious to most, but as I sit here in nostalgia, this was a difficult conclusion to reach.

Let's analyze my life for a minute. I just returned to college after spending the first half of the semester in Europe studying religious history. That experience was absolutely life changing and I was inspired to change and to become. While I was there, I found myself anxious to return because I saw a bright future ahead of me. I was fearless, because no matter what, I knew that God would stand by me. I knew that He would guide my steps. Though I stepped into the dark, I trusted that He would light my path. This certainty made me wish the trip would come to a conclusion so that I would come home and put the things I learned into practice.

When I returned, I was tested by the life I had already set up for myself before the trip. Although I had returned with new-found confidence and faith, I still had to face the life I left behind; for it had not changed its perspective. The people I know and loved and the places familiar to me expected the same old Jessica. They expected the same mistakes, the same attitudes, the same goals. This would be my new challenge -- to change the person I had once been.

In the process of aligning my life and will with Gods, I found myself stumbling and afraid. I lost the long, enduring companionship of my best friend. In so many ways, I lost the force which kept me strong for so many years. I lost my foundation. As I unraveled on the floor, my will was weakened. And much like Lot's wife, I looked back; refusing to trust in God's ability to provide me with a new foundation.

As I looked back, the rest of my life broke down before me. I found myself distant from the people I cared about. I found myself detached and alone and afraid once again. Though I caught up on my sleep and on my exercise, I felt like I was losing my grasp on the future and on my faith.

And so, here I am today. Barely holding on. Yet I had this wonderful experience and I was rescued once again. Elder Jeffrey R. Holland once said that God doesn't care nearly as much about where you have been as He does about where you are and, with His help, where you are willing to go. And so here I am today. Barely holding on, but trusting that God has a plan for me and that he will provide a way by which His plan can be accomplished.

There but for the grace of God, go I.

i carry your heart

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) I am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear
no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

- e.e. cummings

The Art of Losing...

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something everyday. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these things will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

--Elizabeth Bishop

Liberation

"And no doubt it is more comfortable to submit to a blind enslavement than to work for liberation." (Simone de Beauvoir)

Pride and Love

Alright, I think I had an epiphany. I'll let you be the judge, since I don't quite entirely know what to make of it yet....Here it is.

This may seem a bit random, but The Wedding Singer, the movie, has been on my mind during the past couple of weeks. And here's something I only just realized today.

What happens at the end of the movie? You know, before Robby sings to Julia on the airplane and then they get married. I don't know why this stuck out so much to me, but today I learned something new about myself.

I put myself in Robby Hart's shoes when he realizes that Julia, the woman he's in love with, has fled with her idiot fiance to Las Vegas to get married as soon as possible, after having gone over to Robby's house to tell him that she was in love with him and meeting Robby's ex-girlfriend at the door wearing his t-shirt and underwear.

Now, I understand that if I were Julia, I would've probably been rather hurt as well. However, I had never really analyzed the grandness of Robby's ability to swallow his pride and truly fight for his love for Julia by dropping everything without questions, in order to get on the next plane and chase after her. I don't know if I would have showed as much understanding as Robby. All I can imagine is how I'd be condemning Julia for having left me. I'd probably wallow and denounce her love as false, assuming that if she had truly loved me, and if the love had been real, than she wouldn't have left to marry the wrong guy, in spite of desperation.

Maybe somewhere inbetween those two is the right answer, the path lovers should take. Maybe Robby is willing to swallow his pride for her sake, and maybe Julia should have stayed. I guess what I'm trying to say is that we all have to fight for the things we want, we each have to be willing to make sacrifices because love is always a two-way street—a joint effort.