Zora Neale Hurston wrote in Their Eyes Were Watching God, “There are years that ask questions and years that answer.” I love that. I love reading and one of the many reasons I do, is for little lines like this. These lines that make the breath catch in our throats. I’ve realized that the reason they make our breath catch is that we can tell the writer wrote them and meant them and it makes us want to sigh out a “yes”, but we were already breathing normally, so our throats quickly catch that breath that we were going to let out normally and they say, “NO! That was important! Hold this one in so you can sigh it out as a ‘yes’.” Or maybe that’s just me and you have no clue what I’m talking about.
Anyway, it’s my birthday. I am now 22, though I don’t feel 22. I feel more like…32, maybe? Age is just a number. Let’s say I feel…much older than I did two years ago. Because 20 asked a lot of questions, such as: Can I handle living on my own? Can I really provide for myself? Will I meet a boy? Will I meet “the boy”? Will I figure out what I want to do with my life? Is this going to be another year of monotony or will God make something crazy happen? Was last year really monotonous?
20 didn’t ask all of these questions at once, but the entire year was filled with small internal conflicts, lots of questions. And 21 felt more…exploratory? That sounds awfully stereotypical. Let’s say 21 felt more hypothetical. Without realizing it, I was taking the questions I had asked myself at 20, and forming hypotheses (that is the correct plural, I checked) that could be tested.
At 20 I asked if I could live on my own and provide for myself. So when my roommate decided to move to Hawaii, I decided to live on my own instead of move back home. A life experiment. And the Conclusion? When you live alone, you start to think a lot about yourself, because you’re really the only person you have to talk to. You immediately come home and turn on the tv or music, because you need the noise. You become this really weird person who craves attention, but also doesn’t want anyone to come over into your domain because then you’d have to entertain (and put pants on). And when you do go out with people, within 30 minutes you’re craving the solitude of your shack again. This also could just be me, but in Case Study H (H is for Hannah) these were the findings.
I could provide for myself and I could live alone and I could very much like it that way and be very very comfortable. I absolutely loved living by myself…but, like Donald Miller said, “When you live on your own for a long time, your personality changes because you go so much into yourself you lose the ability to be social, to understand what is and isn’t normal behavior. There is an entire world inside yourself, and if you let yourself, you can get so deep inside it you will forget the way to the surface. Other people keep our souls alive, just like food and water does with our body.”
So when I realized I needed “soul food” I would reach out, which brings us to the next two questions about boys. Because as twenty-somethings we see our friends getting engaged, getting married, and having children and if they’re not doing these things, then they’re at least dating or at least having sex. And it’s really weird! It’s even more weird when you’re not doing ANY of these things. But I tried to for a little while. I met some boys. Not like a lot of boys, but enough boys to say more than some boys. None of these boys however, were “the boy”. A couple of these boys and I are still friends so I can’t say much more about it other than…I’m not good at boys. Case Study H’s findings for year 21 were inconclusive on the boy front and that is so okay with me.
So as 20-21 was filled with internal conflict, 21-22 was filled with existential crises. And I’m not talking about a few major ones throughout the year. I’m talking about a major one a week, and about five mini ones a day. Because again, living alone you’re forced into yourself and you’re also forced to see how your insides affect the outsides around you. So…not to sound like a 15 year old sipping on a frappuccino but, WHAT IS LIFE?!…and what do I do with the one I’m given? 21 didn’t answer this one. 21 didn’t even begin to try to hypothesize or test this one out. 21 tried to avoid this question at all costs until Case Study H was going to lose her mind. Which answers the monotony question. God did make something crazy happen, He made Case Study H wake up. He made Case Study H want something. He made me want The World Race. He made The World Race accept me. He made me start a journey that will surpass this year, and the next, and the next. Because like I’ve said, if life is anything, it is a story, and slowly I’ve come to realize my place in it. So while 21 didn’t answer the question of what I’m going to do with my life, it did answer the how am I going to do my life. And the how is so much more important than the what.
Let me say that again: THE HOW IS SO MUCH MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE WHAT. It doesn’t matter what you do. Occupation isn’t who you are. But how you carry out your life and that occupation is a huge part of your character. If you write, write in love. If you deliver pizza, deliver it in love. How you do something is more important than what you do. That’s why Paul wrote that God loves a cheerful giver (2 Corinthians 9:7). That’s why Paul wrote that we could have every gift of the Spirit given to man, but without love we’re useless (1 Corinthians 13). Because $1 given out of love is worth more than $100 given reluctantly or out of guilt. A sticky note with kind words of encouragement is worth more than a $5 Hallmark Thank You card sent out of obligation.
So I guess, looking back, with all these answers I’ve been given, I can’t really say last year was monotonous at all. And looking forward, 22 is going to be crazy. I believe 22 will ask questions and answer them. I believe Case Study H will be doing ridiculous amounts of hypothesizing and research. I believe some conclusions will be met with a smile and some will be met with a grimace, but all conclusions will be met with peace and the understanding that God is in control.
And, I have to ask; What kind of year are you having? Are you burdened down with questions or has this year been filled with small “ah-ha” moments, little “eureka!”s? If it’s the latter, I encourage you to not get too ahead of yourself, because new questions are guaranteed to pop up and our earthly knowledge just can’t answer them all. If it’s the former, then I encourage you to not give up, because these answers did not come all at once, and I didn’t find them all in The Bible (though reading it often certainly helps), and God didn’t specifically speak into my mind and give me these answers, instead He guided me and my life in ways that made me find the answers myself. Looking back, I realize that Don Miller was right again when He writes, “It is always the simple things that change our lives. And these things never happen when you are looking for them to happen. Life will reveal answers at the pace life wishes to do so. You feel like running, but life is on a stroll. This is how God does things.” This is how God is doing things.
