Dear Mom,

Before I could get to my actual studying (I have two intense tests this week), I wanted to write down just a few thoughts that floated across my mind while I was laying on the grass after class.

Thought #1-
I am now 23 years old and not getting younger. Sure I feel that my body is in the best shape it has ever seen, and I am doing things that I only thought the Gwilliams could do, my brain is learning at a rate that would make the scholars of the 19th century jealous and the cup of Social-Life-Juice is well past its capacity...even with all of these new and great experiences, I have not yet mastered the level of independence I seek for.

Thought #2
Making cookies yesterday with Ali was a result of going through several different cookie choices. Before making our oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, She placed 5 papers on the table in front of me in order to decide between; oatmeal raisin, chocolate chip, pumpkin, chocolate chocolate chip, raisin and some other types of cookies. All of these cookies (except the raisin as you would know) were all likely candidates and completely able to please my palate. The choice was hard with so many choices, but with only one choice, let's say oatmeal chocolate chip and oatmeal raisin, I could have made the choice so easily but with the juxtaposition of choice, it was significantly more difficult. Mom, BYU has the largest plate of cookies that you could imagine, and my whole life could be spent trying to find a better cookie, but all I really need to search for is for the cookie that is trying to be the best cookie it can be. All the rest will take care of itself.

Thought #3
There are times when I compare the girls that I date either with you, my dearest sisters, girls that I have dated in the past, or the girl mentioned in my Patriarchal Blessing. This is a dangerous thing to do because like Corianne who dated Kurt while writing a missionary, we can never clearly see those people that we idealize. I have wrestled with this thought for a long time and it proves to yield more negative fruits than positive so I have taken a different approach- compare with what God wants for me. The story that illustrates this was already shared with you while on the phone, but I think that it was such a needed revelation for me to understand this one simple thought; "what do I think about My child?" Sure I may think that there are bigger and better out there, but what does God think about all of His children and why does that give me the right to think that there I should count and esteem them as less? This isn't a form of justification, but rather it's a way of allowing me to intuitively see the whole picture as it is being constantly painted by the Master's Hand.


I don't really have any other thoughts right now other than I realize that becoming independent doesn't mean that I have to break off all lines of help from others, but rather independence for me means that I need to take that information as it comes from others, process it, and make my own decision based upon principles of truth.

Thanks for reading my letter mom. Let me know what insights you may have and what your feelings are about these passing thoughts :)

Much love,


Your Son