i'm good but i'll get better

Being an RM is just about the weirdest thing I've ever experienced. Such complex emotions and oh so many feels that I can't quite explain. People ask me simple questions nowadays and I completely buckle under pressure, becoming some incoherent mess. What are my plans for the future? How was my mission? How am I adjusting? Questions like that can't be answered simply. How was my mission? Idk, how were the last 18 months of your life? Could you just summarize that in a sentence or two for me? How are you adjusting? Have you ever stepped off a moving sidewalk onto solid ground and had that moment where you're just like "whoa"?

And how is it that after introducing myself as "Anna" for twenty years of my life, suddenly I stumble when saying my own name now? How in the world did 18 months of habit change 20 years?

I mean, I'm fine. I function just fine in the world. Jeans were an easy transition and I'm not the most awkward person you've ever seen, but it's still just weird. This huge, wonderful, lovely chunk of my life is just this thing of the past so quickly. After a lot of thinking, I've come to figure out at least some of the root of my problem. I had become a really great version of myself as Sister Lewis. I was by no means perfect, but I was much better than Anna had been - you know, close to the spirit, more patient, less selfish, less of a procrastinator, all that fun stuff you're supposed to learn on a mission. And then I've been thrown back into the same environment I was in before I found this ideal version of myself, and sometimes I feel like I left those attributes behind. I don't know how to explain it but it's been hard. RM Anna just needs to be different and she's trying to figure out how. 

We had a wonderful senior Elder at the Visitors' Center on my mission, and I was lucky enough to get to spend a lot of my time there. When we'd come to shift halfway through the day and find Elder Burnham behind the front desk, I had one companion in particular that would always ask "How are you today, Elder Burnham?" And he'd always respond, "You know, I'm good. But I'll get better." It was onward and upward with that fellow and I appreciated that. 

So here's to being good but getting better.

And wearing jeans again. Cause seriously, so good.