Reunions at their best.

Hi Miss T.

It's alright. Go ahead. You may laugh. I give you my permission. You may laugh at me, sitting bundled up on your couch in my hoody with the hood tied, hand warmers in my pockets, knitted socks, and my Snuggie to top it off, in this the month of July. Though it is cold here many days (let's define cold in relation to Hawaii please), it's awesome to be back on your couch. At least I'm good for a giggle or two, right?

I've been spending time on your couch reading. This is quality reading that I am doing, as you know, because you yourself gave me the book: Goose Girl. This rekindled love of reading, and other recent events have caused me to recognize and consider the joining again of two things that have been apart, or in other words, reunions, if you will.

Isn't it a delight to be together again with a sister who you've always looked up to and tried to be like? How time changes the details, but the essence of who we are and what we live for link us back together as if we had never been apart.

What a sensation it is to be reunited with a good book, a fairy tale clearly, and get lost in the dreams and fantasies that you lived in as a young adolescent. To find yourself again thinking and hoping even now that if you were lucky a prince would fall in love with you because of your noble deeds, or if you were luckier, the stableboy would fall in love with you and somehow his right to the throne would become known through the journey of your love story. Then you would live together happily, and work at the ever after.

How good it is to see again old high school chums. To see one another with slightly modified hairstyles, maybe a little less-sloppy clothing choice, and the exact same smiles and expressions that imprinted memory upon memory in the first place. To sit together over lunch, and talk of grown-up goals that were once airy dreams above our heads, now insurance card and job offers in our pockets.

These are all recent reunions I have had, and to top it off was the reunion with an LDS missionary, our brother Brock. Perhaps why reuniting with a missionary is the sweetest of all reunions, is because of the separation that precedes this reunion. You may think I mean the initial separation of a missionary, when they leave behind family, friends, and lifestyle for 1 1/2-2 years to be obedient to strict codes of conduct and focus on the purpose of inviting others to come unto Christ. True, that separation is difficult. But there is another, that makes the reunion all the sweeter.

When I was away in Hawaii as a missionary, my love and appreciation for my family grew because, "you don't know what you got til it's gone," right? But to my surprise my heart opened and expanded to immeasurable sizes as I met my Hawaiian Ohana. The genuine and selfless love that initiated the separation in the first place only grows while you serve as a missionary, and help all to understand the purpose of this life. So, when the day comes that you have to leave that new found mission ohana, for me Hawaii and for our brother Japan, that separation is best consoled by a reunion with one's family. How sweet indeed that reunion is.

And so, though my feet and hands may be cold, the truth is that my heart and spirit are not. They are warmer than ever in this cool Seattle summer weather, and together we will laugh and giggle, because for now we are together. A reunion of the best kind.

Aloha. Kk