...all things are become new...

I have exactly five days remaining of my first pharmacy rotation, and then I board a plane on Saturday morning, and after a plethera of layovers, land in Anchorage, Alaska, where I will start my second of eight rotations. Pretty extreme travels just to work and learn in a pharmacy type setting, but extreme travels mean extreme learning and extreme excitement and I am bursting with nervous and excited anticipation!

Before I begin that journey though, I have to say goodbye to a few things in Omaha - to my hospital rounding team of doctors and medical students, to new friends here in Omaha I haven't even had a chance to really get to know and to old ones who will be gone on their own adventures when I return, and to my time as a big sister in the Big Brothers Big Sisters (BBBS) program here in Omaha. All of these people have taught me in big and small ways, but I want to write specifically for a minute about Brianna, my little sister with BBBS.

We had our last official date night on Friday. We went to TGI Friday's for dinner and then to the movie Despicable Me 2 - both Brianna's choices. And then I brought her home and had to say goodbye. And it was difficult, much more so than I had anticipated. And it made me realize all of the things that this beautiful little girl taught me.

Briana and I on our last date.

 It was so easy to get caught up in the stress and demands of pharmacy school. I struggled with finding balance and got upset on more than one occasion that I didn't have time to spend with all of the people I cared about. But, what my older friends could forgive me for in matters of scheduling, I realized an 11-year-old wouldn't understand and shouldn't have to understand. Brianna kept me grounded. I had to make time for her because otherwise I knew I failed her, and she had never done anything to deserve that. I was always amazed that no matter how short a time I was able to make for her she was happy to see me and excited to do anything at all. I was humbled that the number one thing on her wish list of time with her "big sister" was to have a sleepover. I was in awe of her ability to love and trust me despite the many times I felt I let her down in matters of time and energy I was able to give to her. She never demanded much of me at all, but her innocence and willingness to love taught me more important lessons than I ever learned in my hours of library studying.

Gingerbread houses on our sleepover night

It was a sacrifice to make time for Brianna, but I am so grateful I did. I was reading my scriptures this morning before church and lost in my emotions of goodbyes and new beginnings, and I came across 2 Cor 5:17:

"Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new."

And it made me realize that becoming new is a process. A lifelong process of learning and goodbyes, each time we leave taking lessons with us as we go that make us newer. And I thought of Brianna and how the lessons she has taught me have been so humbling and how in humility, void of our natural defenses, we are able to learn so much. And it all made the scripture in Mosiah 3:19 come to life for me in newness. How if we are truly "in Christ," we are innocent and perfectly loving like children. How we must strive daily - through as many goodbyes and new beginnings as it takes - to constantly become those new creatures. I am grateful for my time with Brianna to remind me of the beauty of such love!

"For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fallof Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometha as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father."  Mosiah 3:19