Graduation

This is a long-awaited post. Sorry.



April 22 started just like any other normal thursday. I woke up at 6:30, showered, got ready, drank my glass of orange juice, took a little nap on the couch while watching CNN, packed my lunch, and left for work, listening to Michael Jackson on the way because after all, this way a special day.

Work was slow. It usually is toward the end of the month and I was especially grateful for that this particular day. Kirk, Catherine and myself were all in the same room and it just happened that all three of us were going to be graduating that afternoon. As we sat and talked about our school experience, our memories that we have had together, our majors, our future plans, and the actual ceremony, I got really nervous. I was finally graduating. Something that I had been waiting and dreaming about my whole life was finally happening.



It reminded me of my senior year in high school when I was sitting outside of the mini dome with all of my friends dressed in black and red robes. We were taking pictures, laughing, talking about our future, and anxiously awaiting the four hour ceremony which was about to take place. It was a nervous feeling. Not because of the actual graduation, but because of what the future held.

Like I said, I felt the same thing while I was working; and I am positive Kirk and Cat were feeling the exact same way. As I packed up right before noon, I headed home to hurry and get my cleaning check done before my family arrived. Mom, Dad, Heidi, Tami and Aubrey were headed down to celebrate the festivities with me.







After eating subway and frozen yogurt, taking dozens of pictures, and avoiding the rain, we headed up to the marriott center to prepare for commencement. All 8,000+ BYU graduates lined up in huge parking lots to walk in the processional, which surprisingly enough was shorter than I had anticipated. Some of my best friends - Spencer, Stephen, Jake, Sam, and Jeff - were all right next to me as we walked and then sat through the hour-long ceremony.

President Samuelson (BYU President) as well as Elder C. Todd Christofferson, spoke of the importance of gaining knowledge. Elder Christofferson explained that the real purpose for us as children of God is to live this mortal experience and to do all the things that the Lord commands. He spoke on the important of gaining knowledge, learning to serve one another, and living the celestial law. One of the things I wrote down was that "Regardless of an individual's college degrees or employment, opportunities to live a life of Christian greatness come to all." It was such a blessing to be able to sit at my graduation and hear an apostle of the Lord speak. BYU really is a wonderful place and the commencement speeches were very uplifting.



We celebrated that night at Carrabas, feasting on amazing Italian food, and celebrating Heidi's 27th birthday.



The next morning, BYU split the thousands of graduates into departments for the actual walking ceremony. I had debated even going to this ceremony, but looking back, I am very glad that I sat through two hours of names being read, so that I could walk across the stage and receive my diploma. It is something I will never forget.

The whole weekend was one to remember. Thanks to my parents, Heidi, Tami, Aubrey and those who wished me luck but couldn't make it because of other circumstances. I love you all.



In the days and weeks following graduation, I keet reflecting upon a certain talk that I had heard Elder Holland give at BYU last winter. It was titled, "Remember Lot's Wife." Many of you may have heard it, or may have heard me talk about it. It seems like every time I teach Sunday School, I refer back to certain quotes. It is THAT good and is very pertinent to what is happening in my life right now.

He said, "I plead with you not to dwell on days now gone, nor to yearn vainly for yesterday however good those yesterdays may have been. The past is to be learned from but not lived in. We look back to claim the embers from glowing experiences but not the ashes. And when we have learned what we need to learn and have brought with us the best that we experienced, then we look ahead, we remember that faith is always pointed toward the future -- faith always has to do with blessings and truths and events that will yet be efficacious in our lives."

When I first heard this devotional talk on a freezing winter morning in January of last year, I was amazed at how Elder Holland seemed to know exactly what the students of BYU -- and all of the church for that matter -- needed to know. I remember sitting next to Kimbre and looking over and taking her hand and saying, "How did he know? How did he knew that is what we both needed to hear?" She looked at me with tears on her cheeks and said something like, "I think that talk was meant for all of us. Look at the thousands of students in this room just like me and you. They are scared and today was a reassurance that everything is going to be ok."

This time in our lives is not only exciting, but also very scary. It is full of unknowns, trials, questions and very few answers --at least easy ones to find. It is a waiting game, where we patiently wait to see if the Lord is going to influence and direct our lives in the way that he chooses, or if we are just going to take the reigns of our own decisions and be our own pilots. I've tried both in the past couple years and let me just say that the journey has been a lot better when I have had a co-pilot by my side. Especially since that co-pilot has been perfectly trained in Directing, Guiding and Influencing 101.

My favorite part of the talk, which I refer to almost weekly and have all but memorized, is when he talks about him and his wife, and the day that they were graduating from BYU. They had the same doubts, fears and questions about the future that I am having.

He said, "Sister Holland and I were married about the time both of us were reading poems in BYU classrooms. We were as star struck -- and as fearful -- as most of you are at these ages and stages of life. We had absolutely no money. For a variety of reasons neither of our families were able to help us finance our education. We had a small apartment just south of campus -- all of two rooms and a bath. We were both working too many hours trying to stay afloat financially -- but we had no other choice.

I remember one fall day -- I think it was in the first semester after our marriage in 1963 -- walking together up the hill past the Maeser Building on the sidewalk between the President's Home and the Brimhall Building. Somewhere on that path we stopped and wondered what we had gotten ourselves into. Life that day seemed overwhelming, and the undergraduate plus graduate years we still had before us seemed monumental, nearly insurmountable. Our love for each other and our commitment to the gospel were strong but most of the other more temporal things around us seemed particularly ominous. On a spot which I could probably still mark for you today, I turned to Pat and said something like, "Should we give up? I can get a good job and carve out a good living for us. I can do okay without a degree. Should we stop trying to tackle what right now seems so difficult to face?" In my best reenactment of Lot's wife I said, in effect, "Let's go back. Let's go home. The future holds nothing hopeful for us.

Then my beloved little bride did what she has done for 45 years since then. She grabbed me by the lapels and said, "We are not going back. We are not going home. The future holds everything hopeful for us." She stood there in the sunlight that day and gave me a real pep talk. I don't recall that she quoted Paul but there was certainly plenty in her voice that said she was committed to setting aside all that was past in order to press toward and seize "the prize of God" that lay yet ahead. It was a living demonstration of faith. It was "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen (Hebrews 11:1). So we laughed, kept walking, and finished up sharing a root-beer, one glass, two straws, at the then newly constructed Wilkinson Center.

Twenty years later I would on occasion, look out of the window of the President's Home across the street from the Brimhall Building and picture there on the sidewalk two newly wed BYU students, down on their money and down even more on their confidence. As I would gaze out that window I would occasionally see not Pat and Jeff Holland but you who were walking that same sidewalk -- sometimes as couples, sometimes as a group of friends, sometimes just one lone student. And I knew that some of you were having those same thoughts we had had. Is there any future for me? What does a new year, or a new semester, or a new major, or a new romance hold for me? Will I be safe? Will life be sound? Can I trust in the Lord and in the future? Or would it be better to look back, to go back, to go home?

To all such of every generation I call out, "Remember Lot's wife." Faith is for the future. Faith builds on the past but never longs to stay there. Faith trusts that God has great things in store for each of us and that Christ is the "high priest of good things to come." I pray you will have a wonderful semester, a wonderful year, a wonderful life all filled with faith and hope and charity. Keep your eyes on your dreams, however distant, and live to see the miracles of repentance and forgiveness, trust and divine love transform your life today, tomorrow and forever."



The promises of that day have been fulfilled. I have had a wonderful semester, a wonderful year and wonderful BYU experience.

They have been the most exciting four years of my life.

Even though I am still searching for a job in the fall, contemplating grad school and unsure about the direction my life is going, one thing is for sure. Graduation was a great way to recognize my hard work and sacrifice.

In the same talk mentioned above, Elder Holland said, "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."

I am up to the challenge.