End

Even after I stepped off the plane, I was still, technically, a missionary. Two years ago, my stake president laid his hands on me and used his priesthood power to officially make me a missionary. With that distinction, I was bound by missionary rules and entitled to specialized missionary blessings. With the laying on of hands by a person who carried the authority of God, I was set apart in the sense that I now occupied a distinctive class of human beings —no better or worse than my fellows, but different. I was, for lack of a better word, apart.

As my parents drove me to the stake president's office, I was quiet. I had awakened from the long dream of my mission, but I was still groggy. This place, my home, looked just like it had when I had left it. I wasn't sure if I should cry or start celebrating. It was just too surreal to accept just yet.

President Miller looked the same as he had before my mission, a tall, balding man with a firm handshake. In his office, he steepled his fingers and asked, "Do you think the Lord is pleased with your mission, Elder Kunz?"

I could feel my parents' gaze on my back. I knew the answer was probably a yes, but I had to think on this one. My perfectionist nature refused to allow me to forget a few incidents, including the one involving the camel, that marred my obedience record.

But it occurred to me then that President Miller wasn't just talking about following the rules. A missionary can follow all the rules to the letter and come home unfulfilled. Did I make the most of my time? Did I make New Mexico a better place?

"I think so," I said.

"Really?" President Miller asked.

I thought over all the people I had taught, over the few I had baptized, and over the companions I'd spent time with. All at once, I felt peace. It wasn't the same kind of peace I had felt at the end of my mission, which was a tenuous, hard-won peace like an armistice between opposing armies. This was a final peace, like the kind you're supposed to feel just before you slip into the great beyond.

In a way, I was definitely slipping into that great beyond.

"Yeah," I said.

President Miller laid his hands on me and declared that my full-time missionary service was over. I rose and looked up at my parents.

"I really want to watch Transformers now," I said.

President Miller and my parents laughed. As we left the room, we passed the stake president's next appointment — a kid two years younger than me, squirming between his own parents and wincing at his freshly cut missionary haircut.

I gave him a thumbs up.

Dream Within a Dream, Part 2

I thought back to Elder Hillam’s question. I’d made plenty of lists in the past few months — movies to see, books to read, girls to look up. Spider-Man 3 was out, as well as the third Pirates of the Caribbean. Some new vampire books had apparently earned the rapt attention every bored housewife. Girls who had been too young for me before my mission were now ripe for the dating.

But none of it mattered. Even those lists were part of the dream. Now that the end was finally upon me, it struck me with such a jarring reality that nothing I had done before my mission ended could prepare me. The end was finally real in a way that it had never been. I felt a kinship to my old self, who had been so overwhelmed at the start of the mission, thrust into a new world.

The plane taxied into the Idaho Falls Regional Airport and stopped at the gate. Other missionaries and fellow travelers stood and reached for their belongings. I sat there, unable to turn back but afraid to go forward. After all this time, after all my struggles, after all the trials and travails and hardships and successes and rewards of missionary life, I had finally earned peace. Once I stepped through that gate, that hard-earned peace would be gone, replaced by …

By what?

Anxiety at readjusting to regular life? Contentment at rejoining family? Fear of an expanding unknown?

I walked through that gate.

At the bottom of the escalator, signs and banners welcomed the missionaries home: “WE LOVE YOU ELDER HILLAM,” or “WELCOME BACK ELDER SMITH.”

My family didn’t have balloons or signs; they only had smiles. That was good; signs would have been too much for me. My mother and sister were crying; my brothers and father were standing there, trying to look tough. They were unreal and yet so very real at the same time. They were photographs given life. They looked the same, and yet they looked different. Someone else was crying; it might have been me.

The dream was over.