waxing philosophical

Hey Jess,

I kept thinking last night how much I would hate it if we had to drive as long as you did to get home. :)  I hope your trip went smoothly and that you's guys get to relax a little before jumping back into work and everything else tomorrow.

This past weekend was so much fun!  On our way home, I turned the stereo in our car on and whaddaya know, the CD you made me was in.  Jake fell asleep, and so as I drove through the UP, I had some time to think.  I listened to the lyrics of the songs and was touched by the themes that I heard repeating in the lyrics.  

I want to live a simple life.

Time is accelerating.

We'll weave our days together like waves and particles of life.

Helping the kids out of their coats, oh wait the babies haven't been born.

I got a man to stick it out and make a home from rented house.

We'll collect the moments one by one, I guess that's how the future's done.

I am humbled in this city, there seems to be an endless sea of people like us.

We make hope from every small disaster.

I'll make my own way in this wide world.

We might not have any money, but we've got our love to pay the bills.

Let's get rich and build a house on a mountain making everybody look like ants.

This is how it works:

You peer inside yourself, 

You take the things you like

and try to love the things you took.

And then you take the love you made

and stick it into someone else's heart,

pumping someone else's blood.

And walking arm in arm, you hope it don't get harmed,

but even if it does, 

you'll just do it all again.

Everywhere you go, I'm there with you,

Still part of you,

I'll never let you go at it alone.

Very late at night and in the morning light, nobody knows me at all.

How do I show all the love inside my heart?

For this is all new, and I'm feeling my way through the dark.

I used to talk with honest conviction of how I predicted my world.

I had been thinking about mine and Jake's situation right now... how we're thinking about buying a house, the option of moving to a new place, and feeling very confused and conflicted.  And how it's not fair that we can't have everything mapped out for us and how it's not fair that we don't know exactly what we need to do.  And so then I started listening to those lyrics, and felt humbled.  I realized that this is it.... this is life. 

I thought about me and you and how we've changed and all that we have experienced in these past four years.  We are now college graduates, in our early twenties, and this is part of life.  We aren't supposed to know.  And it's beautiful, to have it this way.  To have our whole lives ahead of us, to just be able to dream and stretch and grow.  To not know of the tragedies and struggles we'll face, to only know of the happiness we have in the present.  

I am so proud of us, and so happy for us too.  It fills my heart with so much joy, that we are still friends and that even though we're different in some ways, deep down, we are still the same sentimental, sensitive, whimsical little girls that we once were.  I am so happy that we can have so much fun together, with our husbands.  That we have both married good men who love us and take care of us.  That we're "collecting the moments one by one", because "that's how the future's done."

Anyway, I just want you to know how much I love you and how much Heavenly Father loves you, too.  I hope you two hear back from med schools soon and that we'll get to see each other again soon.

~ Rudi