Why adulthood is (going to be) amazing:

This ended up on some Artisan Bread with Apple Cranberry juice to drink, and was delicious

I was feeling mature and ambitious (and hungry), so i bought and made real food for lunch.  I had gotten very bored of yogurt and ham sandwiches ham sandwiches and yogurt, and I was craving real food.

This got me thinking about how life is just going to get more awesome.  Here are some things about encroaching adulthood that don't terrify me:

Home ownership and all the creative license that entails (I'm looking at you, Aspen Ridge management.)
My kitchen.  Oh man. Don't get me started on my future kitchen.
Having ingredients and a reason to make food that's interesting and good fairly regularly
Not living with 3 other guys (no offense to my current roommates, who are great)
Owning a good piano, and having space for it.

It's not exactly an exhaustive list, but I'm expecting good things for the second half of my 20's.

I've got soul

One of the perils of teaching missionaries is occasionally they get wise and invite you to do things, like talk about why you're mormon on your blog.  So I'm delving into the second topic that is fairly central to my life but which I rarely discuss on my blog, Religion.   It is Sunday after all.

I rarely talk about religion because I feel like religion is a very personal thing, and it would seem I'm not the most open person when it comes to personal things (recent blog posts not withstanding), but I think it's worth understanding why, in spite of my normal rational and dispassionate nature, I would base my life so much on something that can be so intangible at times.

So first of all, I have never loved the idea of The God of the Void.  This is sort of a science-y way to describe it; I just don't like the idea of believing in God because he fills the gaps in things we don't understand.  There are some things I don't understand in science, but I don't feel like they are proof that God exists, they're just proof that science is still evolving.  I don't think we need God to fill in the gaps, and the implication of that sort of belief is that once the gaps are filled we don't need God. I like to think that I continue to believe in God because of the things I know, despite the things I don't.  And over the course of my life I've had a lot of times that I really have felt that God exists, found answers to my questions, had warnings that kept me safe, and have received the things I need or wanted as the result of prayer.  When I want to know how the world works, science functions pretty well.  When I want to find purpose in life, and strength, and happiness and love, I find religion works better.

At the same time, I feel like a lot of things I ascribe to God, other people can ascribe to coincidence, and I know enough of how the brain and our memories work to recognize that we're prone to find the things we're looking for.  So while I do feel like I can find reassurance in these things, it's not exactly perfect.

I think at the core, when things are tough or I have questions I keep going because religion makes me happy.  I feel like my life is really good, and believing in God and living accordingly makes me the sort of person I want to be, and brings happiness to my life.  Which is to say I believe in God because I want to, and because it's good.

And that's me. I don't presume to say that this is the best way to believe in God, but it works very well for me.

We can probably return to our typical, shallow chronology of my life.

~Not a soldier