My heart hurts.

My heart is a little sore today--and my eyes are tired of trying to stay dry. 

We lost an angel today, and heaven gained one incredible superhero. 

I'll miss Bret and his motorcycle and his cowboy hat and his animal cookie contributions to our summer barbecues. 

I'm going to miss his voice in our ward choir and the smile and hug he gave me every time I came home for the weekend. 

I'm going to miss him. We're all going to miss him, so much. 

But as much as we're going to miss our superhero, heaven needed Bret more than we did. 

Bret said it best: "I gave it all, there was nothing else to give." 

I'm honored to have known such an incredible man, and even more grateful that I had the opportunity to have him make such a profound impact on my life. 

Today, my heart aches and I don't really know what to say. 

Today, I'm extra grateful for the Plan of Salvation and the knowledge I have of the eternities and I can't wait for the time I get to see our favorite cowboy again. 

Heaven is here.

You've all heard the saying that if you saw a pile of everybody else's problems and had to choose which ones you wanted, you'd hurry to pick your own back up, right? 

It's a good reminder that even when you think it can't get any worse, someone close to you is going through something even harder. 

But that doesn't make your own trials any easier, does it? 

I'm pretty much the worst at getting wrapped up in my problems and forgetting about all the wonderful things that are happening right alongside the bad ones. 

There's something about watching someone you love suffer that breaks your heart in a way you can't really explain. There's this incredible feeling of gratitude for getting one more day coupled with this longing for their hurt to stop. It gives a whole new definition to the word "bittersweet."

And in the middle of this chaos of emotion there's an overwhelming sense that you're constantly and completely encircled in the arms of a thousand angels--angels trying to make things easier. Angels supporting the idea that heaven is all around us, that heaven is here.

When I was nine years old, my dad's side of the family decided they were better off without me and my family in their lives. It's a long, confusing, and frankly rather boring story, but ultimately it left me sans one entire side of my extended family. For a long time, this was a huge deal to me. But now, almost 12 years later, I've [more or less] accepted it for what it is, and life has gone on as it always does--with the help of the people in my life. 

As it became more and more apparent that my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins weren't coming around anytime soon, it became a subconscious priority to fill the metaphorical hole in my heart with the people I lived by. 

Lucky for me, that was basically every family in my ward, every leader I had in church, and every family friend we made along the way. 

We moved into a new house when I was in high school, and little miss Mary fell in love with the Frodsham family. 

As Mary's friendship with Bret and Kristi developed from playing in their backyard to motorcycle rides around the neighborhood to finding her their whenever our house got a little too quiet, our families became closer and closer; close enough to title our mismatched group of humans the "Lindsham-Frodberg" family. 

Because family is exactly what they've become. 

Bret and Kristi have filled a hole I forgot I had, and I'm so grateful for the love they show my little sisters. 

Watching Bret these last few months has brought flashbacks of the heartbroken and confused high-schooler I was when my grandma passed away, but it's also strengthened my testimony in a thousand different ways. 

I'm more sure now that the Plan of Salvation is real than I ever have been before. My faith in missionaries and missionary work has increased like I didn't think it could, and I don't just mean missionaries here on Earth. 

But I think the most important thing I've learned is how completely we are surrounded by heaven. 

I feel it the nights we spend reading stories with the Frodsham's. 

I felt it watching my cousins running around making gingerbread houses like we did with my grandma. 

It's in the hugs from past YW leaders in my home ward and the comments my neighbors make on everything I do. 

I read it in the texts from my best friends and emails from my parents. 

I hear it in the late-night talks with Brian and Ashley.

I felt it Christmas morning as the fireplace crackled and we got the most perfect snow storm, right on time. 

I feel it every time I go to, or even see, the temple, open my scriptures, or say a prayer. 

Heaven is so close. It's in every single detail of every second of our lives. Every thoughtful act, every kind word, every person we interact with is a direct influence of the heaven we are surrounded by.

So even though my heart is experiencing a new kind of hurt, it's also this strange sort of happy and full at the same time.

Heaven is here--and for that reason, there's nowhere else I'd rather be. 

I almost forgot.

I decided to become an English major because I love words. If you know me at all, you know I never shut up and I love to read almost as much as I love to talk. Somewhere during the school year though I forget that I love to do what I'm doing and I get caught up in the assignments and essays and forget to read just to read.
Luckily, my bookshelf doesn't leave me when all my friends go home for the holidays and I've had the chance to get lost in a few books over the last week or so.
I forgot how good it feels--to get completely sucked into a story line. To stay up way longer than you should to finish. To get so caught up in a line that you want to print it on every surface in your room.
F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby will forever be one of those books that I can [and will] read over and over again and always fall a little more in love with.

"And in the end, we're all just humans drunk on the idea that love, only love, could heal our brokenness." 

"You are the finest, loveliest, tenderest, and most beautiful person that I have ever known--and even that is an understatement." 

"I fell in love with her courage, her sincerity, and her flaming self-respect. And it's these things I'd believe in even if the whole world indulged in wild suspicions that she wasn't all that she should be. I love her. And that is the beginning and end of everything." 

[I mean, let's be real here. Who wouldn't want someone to say that about us?]

I took a class on Charles Dickens and his works this last semester, and as much as I despised his psychotic ways of writing and the way his characters messed with my mind, I couldn't help but relate to some of the things he said. 

"I have been bent and broken, but hopefully into a better shape." 

"Four our path in life is stony and rugged now, and it rests with us to smooth it. We must fight our way onward. We must be brave. There are obstacles to be met, and we must meet, and crush them."

"No one is useless in this world who lightens the burdens of another." 

My American Literature class helped me develop a healthy appreciation for American Literature (besides Fitzgerald, of course) and Kurt Vonnegut has words of advice that I think every person should listen to. 

"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be." 

"Don't be reckless with other people's hearts. And don't put up with people who are reckless with yours." 

"I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'if this isn't nice, I don't know what is."

And some of my random favorites from my favorite novels...

"...Because as good as kissing feels, nothing feels as good as the anticipation of it." [John Green, An Abundance of Katherines]

"Who knows, maybe your love will make me forget all I wish not to remember." [Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo]

"It is to the credit of human nature that, except where it's selfishness is brought into play, it loves more readily than it hates." [Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter]

"And now that you don't have to be perfect, you can be good." [John Steinbeck, East of Eden]

"We cross our bridges as we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and the presumption that once our eyes watered."[Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead]

"We were just there together. And that was enough." [Stephen Chobsky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower]

We've all read things that rocked our worlds, haven't we? We've all fallen in love with a story and wished a thousand times over it wouldn't end. I saw something that said, "we fall in love the way we do because we learned it from literature." And it's true. I want a love worth writing novels about--and a life worth doing the same. That's why I read. 

What are your favorite lines?