{"id":7013,"date":"2016-07-14T17:00:08","date_gmt":"2016-07-14T23:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/?p=7013"},"modified":"2016-07-14T19:52:20","modified_gmt":"2016-07-15T01:52:20","slug":"feeling-like-a-little-kid-on-christmas-morning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/feeling-like-a-little-kid-on-christmas-morning\/","title":{"rendered":"Feeling Like A Little Kid On Christmas Morning!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Going into this weekend\u00a0I feel just like a little kid on Christmas morning! I have waited 18 months for my daughter Ashley to finish serving her LDS Mission so she could come back home to me\u2026and next week she\u00a0is finally coming home!!!\u00a0\u00a0 YAYYYYYYY!!!<\/p>\n

I literally cannot describe how excited I am. It\u2019s impossible to describe the joy that comes when you watch your kid coming down the escalator at the airport after not seeing them for so long. It\u2019s exactly the feeling I imagine we will have in heaven someday when we have waited for someone to join us on the other side and we finally get to see them again\u2026sheer joy\u2026.<\/p>\n

At the age of 18, when my daughter first told me she wanted to go on a mission for our church as soon as she was 19 years old and able to I did everything in my power to talk her out of it. Not because I didn\u2019t love the thought of her doing missionary service work for 18 months, but because at the time my son Dalton had returned home after having served a two year mission himself and the thought of having another child gone, especially my baby girl, was more than my heart could take. But despite my attempts to discourage her from going, she stood strong in her resolve and in she left on her mission in January of 2014, a few weeks before her 19th<\/sup> birthday.<\/p>\n

The reality is that sending a missionary out into the field is brutal. That feeling of seeing your child walking away knowing you won\u2019t get to see them again for 18 months or two years is like having the air sucked out of your lungs. You literally feel like you can\u2019t breathe for a moment\u2026a piece of your soul has been ripped away from you and there isn\u2019t anything you can do about it\u2026that day you see them off is one of the toughest days of your life\u2026<\/p>\n

But then something amazing happens\u2026.you get your very first weekly email and everything in your family changes.<\/p>\n

First, your teenager is communicating with you\u2026and it\u2019s not just one word grunts or flippant remarks\u2026its actual words and stories and feelings they are sharing\u2026and even better, your child no longer treats you like you\u2019re this restrictive parent they want to butt heads with\u2026 they suddenly start treating you like you are their magical unicorn\u2026.they tell you they love you.. and appreciate you\u2026they open up to you about their hopes and fears\u2026they even ask for your advice and they are actually happy to have you give it! \u2026and a few months into their mission they even go so far as to tell you they are sorry for all the times they were hard on you\u2026it\u2019s as if the heavens part and you can hear choirs of angels singing\u2026.for real\u2026 Despite the physical distance between you and your missionary the truth is that you will feel closer than ever to your child\u2026<\/p>\n

Second, your child is learning things that, despite your best efforts as parents, it would be impossible for you to teach them. Because the lessons they are learning can only be taught by their Heavenly Parents — Which brings me to the second and one of the biggest blessing of having a missionary out serving, which is receiving those weekly emails and being able to learn by proxy from your missionary\u2019s experiences.<\/p>\n

During Ashley\u2019s mission I received 78 weekly emails from her. It has been the biggest blessing to learn from, and be inspired by, the life experiences and lessons Ashley shares in her weekly emails. And as excited as I am to see my daughter Tuesday (\u2026and I am EXCITED!!), I have to admit I will desperately miss receiving reading her weekly emails and be uplifted by their messages.<\/p>\n

Once upon a time I may have discouraged my daughter from leaving on a mission, but I can stand here today and testify to all of you that the greatest blessing in my daughter\u2019s life to date<\/u> has been the experience and wisdom she has gained from serving a mission. \u00a0I am proud of her for serving and I am proud of the woman she has become.<\/p>\n

\"IMG_0163\"<\/a><\/p>\n

HAVE THE HAPPIEST DAY!!! I\u2019M GOING TO \ud83d\ude42\u00a0!!!!!<\/p>\n

~Amy Rees Anderson<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Going into this weekend\u00a0I feel just like a little kid on Christmas morning! I have waited 18 months for my daughter Ashley to finish serving her LDS Mission so she could come back home to me\u2026and next week she\u00a0is finally coming home!!!\u00a0\u00a0 YAYYYYYYY!!! I literally cannot describe how excited I am. It\u2019s impossible to describe […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6627,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[9683,395,243,838,501,500,5203,6731,1327,46,550,410,1151,999,10364,9778,10368,3552,287,6477,1010,164,9682,3711,1160,2928,92,1811,51,29,4387,1477,10360,1744,94,1163,276,10358,722,1501,3369,233,296,4881,10361,35,3441,1360,351,10362,1769,242,6060,10367,10359,6138,10366,1416,145,3044,2560,2558,1812,483,6807,915,10369,4266,10363,10365,10356,10357],"class_list":["post-7013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-18-months","tag-amy-rees-anderson","tag-angels","tag-apologize","tag-appreciate","tag-appreciation","tag-arkansas-little-rock-mission","tag-ashley-anderson","tag-ashley-lewis","tag-attitude","tag-blessed","tag-blessing","tag-charity","tag-child","tag-choirs-of-angels","tag-closer","tag-closer-than-ever","tag-coming-home","tag-communication","tag-discourage","tag-distance","tag-effort","tag-eighteen-months","tag-emails","tag-encourage","tag-excited","tag-excitement","tag-experiences","tag-family","tag-god","tag-grace","tag-grow","tag-grow-closer","tag-grow-up","tag-growth","tag-heaven","tag-heavenly-father","tag-heavenly-parents","tag-humility","tag-jesus-christ","tag-lds-mission","tag-learn","tag-lesson","tag-life-experience","tag-like-a-kid-on-christmas-morning","tag-love","tag-mature","tag-message","tag-missionary","tag-my-baby-is-coming-home","tag-parent","tag-parenting","tag-phone-call","tag-physical-distance","tag-proxy","tag-resolve","tag-ripped-away","tag-serve","tag-service","tag-skype","tag-sorry","tag-soul","tag-taught","tag-teach","tag-testify","tag-the-church-of-jesus-christ-of-latter-day-saints","tag-the-other-side","tag-two-years","tag-unicorn","tag-weekly-email","tag-weekly-letters","tag-write-home"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7013"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7013\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7054,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7013\/revisions\/7054"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.amyreesanderson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}