Throughout the years, I’ve come to realize that one of my biggest fears is being forgotten.

Now, I don’t have athazagoraphobia. My fear of being forgotten isn’t a phobia – more of a sad nuisance because I know I don’t have control over people forgetting or remembering me. [My fear of spiders, on the other hand – that’s a phobia.]

But still. It’s something that bothers me. And it hurts when you know you’ve been forgotten and replaced. That’s actually a point about my mission I’ve been wrestling with the past few days. Every time I come to terms with one aspect of my mission, I realize there are more buried inside of me.

I served in my last area for 8 months. That’s six transfers, which was half my mission. Half. And I’ll be honest – at first I hated that area. It was the smallest area I served in and we hardly had anyone to teach. I felt boxed in, almost like I couldn’t breathe. And when you’re in a place like that for so long, you’re bound to crack.

For the longest time I was hoping I would leave, but I kept staying month after month. That was my hardest area. I cried more in those eight months than the previous half of my mission. My faith was tested. I saw a lot of my weaknesses and had to accept that there were things I needed to work on.

But more than anything, I learned how to love that area and the people.

Granger is my favorite area to this day. I loved that branch. [Now it’s a ward.] I loved the people. I began loving my little box. I have so many fond memories of that church building, of those apartment buildings, of the cold night air and the green grass and riding my bike.

But then I went home.

And, as always when a missionary leaves an area, I was replaced.

And I slipped away from their memory.

It’s been hard for me to see people I worked with, people I taught, people I went to church with, love someone else more. Sometimes the five year old in me wants to protest, “But I was there longer!”

I have to remind myself I’ve been home a little over nine months. That’s half a sister’s mission. I don’t interact with people as much as I should. And, to be honest, in the field I was a much more quiet and reserved missionary than others who worked in that area, too.

Then the other thought starts creeping in:

What did I do wrong?

As a missionary, it’s easy to feel pressure – pressure to teach, pressure to find, pressure to perform well. And to be completely honest, success was few and far between in my lovely area. Compared to the other companionships, we probably looked like we weren’t doing much, when in fact we were walking all day, trying to catch people at home and find someone.

Often a battle wages inside my head.

Did I do enough?
Did I plan well enough?
Did I have enough faith?
Did I work hard enough?
Did I try enough?
Did I give up too easily some days?

Those are questions no one can answer for me. They’re questions I don’t want anyone to answer, because I’m afraid of what they’ll tell me. Most of the success came after I left. And though I was happy to see so many people baptized and grow in the gospel, a piece of my heart completely broke. I wondered why I hadn’t been worthy of those blessings. I wondered if all my companions in that area remember me as a failure.

I wondered if my beloved branch members remember me as a failure.

Because I had a hard time helping people progress. I could present lessons and explain scriptures, but could I help them feel the Spirit? Could I help them see why the gospel was important? Could I help them apply the gospel to their life?

I don’t know.

And these fears, I’m sure, will plague me for awhile until I can learn to let go and truly accept the fact that I was never a perfect missionary.

But out in the field, I learned I was a fighter. I learned that I don’t give up easily when I want something.

I wanted to serve a mission for 9 years. And even when people thought I was going to go home after my mental breakdown, I held on and I continued till the very last minute of my mission.

And maybe … maybe that’s what my mission was about – to help me realize I don’t quit on the important things, no matter how much I feel like things are slipping through my fingers.