Courtesy of David Archuleta:
Elevator goes up
Elevator come down
And you just go with the flow
Until your feet are back on the ground
It's an endless ride
Sometimes it takes you up
Sometimes it tears you down inside
But it's the butterflies
That keep you feeling so alive, so alive
You gotta get back that high.
I walked along Trumpington Road past King’s College and saw the light of the setting sun through the college wall’s stone windows. I smiled as it hit me for the first time that I was attending Cambridge University. The first weeks had been full of classes, reading articles and textbooks, and getting to know students from Harvard, Princeton, Yale, USC, Brown, and Brigham Young Universities. As the only University of Utah student among groups of students from these other Ivy-League schools, I felt quite unqualified to walk the halls and streets of such a historical, academic place as Cambridge. It became very easy for me to compare myself to these ambitious students and find myself lacking their drive, motivation and study skills. It was in Cambridge that I realized that if I really wanted to improve myself, the only way to do it was to compare myself to myself alone. I recognized that it was good for me to be inspired by the examples of those around me, but I also understood that the most important thing to me should be my individual progression.
I quickly found something non-academic I could improve: my relationship with Jesus Christ. While I was in London and Cambridge this summer on study abroad, I had mixed feelings about home. At first, I longed for the comfortable security I knew home could provide after days of wandering unfamiliar streets and nights of long study hours. Then, a few pieces of disappointing news came from home that made me wonder if home really was a place where I could find security after my 14 weeks in England. Puzzled, I knew that there had to be a place I could depend on to give me comfort. Two things came to mind that I absolutely knew could depend on in any circumstance: me and the Savior. Ideas fell into place as I knelt in my little room on Fitzwilliam Street. I knew that if I could combine the dependability of these two people into one strong force, I could conquer any challenge or discomfort I faced. Words from Helaman 5:12 flashed through my head: “It is upon the rock of our Redeemer, who is Christ, the Son of God, that ye must build your foundation; that when the devil shall send forth his mighty winds, yea, his shafts in the whirlwind, yea, when all his hail and his mighty storm shall beat upon you, it shall have no power over you to drag you down to the gulf of misery and endless wo, because of the rock upon which ye are built, which is a sure foundation, a foundation whereon if men build they cannot fall.” Here, a prophet gave me the promise that if I pattern my life after the Savior and build my life upon the Atonement and His Gospel, I will have a transportable place of security in the form of myself.
What a wonderful promise! The different stages in my life such as marriage and employment will most likely bring with them new locations and the requirement to send out new roots. But if I unite myself with Christ, there are roots that will never need to be dug up, a relationship that never needs to end, and a foundation that will never crack. In fact, these things can grow even stronger and stronger as I face challenges. I bear my growing testimony of the comfort that comes from trusting in the Lord to be our base of security. He never changes.
