Letter to Myself

I am bound and determined to finally, finally start writing here on a regular basis. I resolved back in January to finally start a blog and I re-resolved to actually do it during maternity leave.

But what to write? A quick Google search at two AM brought zillions of writing prompts, but mostly the advice to Just. Write. I'll try a little of both.

But I'll start with: write a letter to yourself ten years ago.

Oh sweet sixteen year old girl.


Right now you are lazing in the last of your easy summer days. Sleeping on trampolines with best friends. Exploring your ever expanding independence. Dropping off your boyfriend at college, wondering what comes next, trying to guard your heart. 

But, it's about to get real. Real hard, then real, real good.

In a few months you'll learn that even though you and that college boyfriend are making it work with just hours between you, you are moving across the country. Your senior year. To the middle of nowhere. That's the real hard.

The real good, that you can't possibly wrap your head around yet? That across the country will push you and that boyfriend to make big commitments, commitments that are worth following through on. That senior year is going to bring a new friend who you will laugh with more in one afternoon than you have in years.That the middle of nowhere is going to have just the right people to grow you, change you into the grown up you're meant to be. 

You can't imagine that as you journal, and read, and then grapple with God that ten years later you will still be doing that. You will still doubt, you will still question, you will still wonder. Despite that you will let Jesus lead you into loving in hard ways and at the hardest moments, the moments you are called to, that make everything up til then seem easy. You will find a confidence in Christ.

All those questions lead you to a good place, a place where you can keep asking questions, and keep loving Jesus.

You are so angry with your parents. Be careful what you say, because very, very soon they will be your friends. Then your best friends. You can't believe this now, but someday you will live in a tiny little steel mill town just to be able to ride to Walmart with your mom now and again.

Right now you want to be a nurse because it's interesting, because it will pay for college, because maybe you will be able to travel. You are going to love it. It won't actually pay for college, and you won't travel how you hope. But someday you will hold a dying woman's phone to her ear so her sister can say goodbye in the moment she passes. Someday you will squeeze blood into a dying new mother, until she isn't dying anymore. Someday you will sit and listen to an old man's stories instead of sitting in the nurses station, and it will change you both. You cannot imagine now, how much nursing will take out of you, or how much it will give back.

And right now, as you wonder what to do about that college boyfriend...take a deep breath. Take it one day at a time. Keep making choices you are proud of. Because loving him across the country is about to become loving him over a bunch of years. The life with him you imagine now is full of adventures. The life you will live with him...less full of adventures, more full of bills and spit up. But it's better. You can't imagine the daddy he'll be to your babies, and how in loving them and him together you love them all that much more.

It's going to get so good. Hold on and love yourself through it.