Eight days later

And (finally) my geography has changed. This is my current view. (Don't mind the clutter on my table, okay?)

For the first time since Thursday of last week, I was out of bed and in the living room first thing this morning. (Keep in mind that I sleep until around 9:00, so "first thing" isn't something that happens as the sun comes up.)

Today, I am grateful that I can sit in my recliner. (I flipping love this chair.) And I'm super grateful for the friends that I have, for the friends that I have always had, in my life.

Jo popped in around 10:00 this morning and stayed until she had to go get her girls from school. Shortly after she left, I received a fb email from one of my friends from ye olden days in Provo. (Ben Matthews, for those BYU 3rd warders who would recognize the name.) A few minutes ago, I was scrolling through fb and read a quote that my seminary teacher, Evan Bingham, had written in response to some comments mutual friends had made on a post he did today.

"Truly Elder Maxwell hit it right when he said, 'Recall the new star that announced the birth at Bethlehem? It was in its precise orbit long before it so shone. We are likewise placed in human orbits to illuminate. Divine correlation functions not only in the cosmos, but on this planet, too.' Elder Neal A. Maxwell, October 2002"

My mind immediately flew back in time twenty years to a conversation I had with my friend Olettie Colettie (aka: Noodlehead, aka: Colette Bird, nee Bright), in which she shared a thought from a BYU devotional she'd attended that week (paraphrased, because I don't know the source), that those people who have eternal influence on our lives are the same people who always have and who always will have eternal influence on our spirits.

I'm so grateful for all of the amazing people I've known in my life. I have more good and happy memories than, I am sure, is my fair share. The Lord has been very, very good to me, in that He has placed wonderful, supportive, funny, artistic, thoughtful, brave and kind people in my path. I wouldn't be who I am without all the friends I've had - so many of whom I still have - in my life.

I am, pretty much, the luckiest girl in the world.