Anchor

Life, like these blogs posts, has taken some twists and turns.  If you look back through the months of postings there was the "Name that Memorial" series focused exclusively on running and tourism, the "studying for finals and the bar exam" series, and now I seem to be in a series on faith.  It's amazing how even wonderful life changes prompt faith-developing experiences.  And it's ironic how the things I worried about 12 months, 10 months, 6 months ago related to my move to New York are the things that seem to be working out perfectly and there are all sorts of other things that leave me with a weird empty feeling.

For the past two weeks I've felt some weird combination between floating and drifting.  Those are two very different feelings.  Floating is being above it all in a place where you wonder if things are real because they are too good to be true.  Drifting is being tossed--being smashed against the woman who has a dog in her purse on a urine infested Subway car, being exhilarated through an eddy of adrenaline that comes from finishing a last minute assignment before leaving the office, being propelled northward on Broadway by some extra-human force at the end of a day when you forgot to eat and failed to sleep from a mixture of anticipation and nerves.  The combination of the two feelings is something akin to hitting a meteor.

I had a mini-identity crisis today.  I longed for someone to laugh at me and say, "Meg...." for doing something that is "so Meg."  Like the picture one friend took of me cooking enchiladas with my blue "birdie" apron on and my Blackberry in hand, or the time I confessed being a worrier in front of the entire congregation at church and then totally called out the smile on my roommate's face as if I could see her sitting on the stand behind me.  I tried to reassert my identity today--I planned a small dinner party.  As former roommates know, I went through a phase where I planned so many dinner parties I had to swear them off, but I loved throwing dinners so much that I started rationalizing by calling them "gatherings."

While simultaneously floating and drifting in the exosphere over this clean slate of an identity, I have felt an incredible need for an anchor.  Something to keep me grounded in reality and what is really important.  So tonight I went to the temple.  It was my anchor.  The temple workers were practicing American Sign Language, so I sat through ordinances in silence watching them speak with their hands, and something amazing happened.  I knew (rather was reminded of knowing) that our Heavenly Father knows us individually.  Our identities are grounded in the fact that we are His children.  He knows us and loves us so much that there is room for each of us to participate in His house and in His work--even if we don't speak.  And His house and His gospel are the same, whether you are with family in Southern California, or with friends who may as well be family in Washington D.C., or with 8 million anonymous faces brimming with potential friendship in New York City.  He knows me and He knows what is "so Meg."