27 Years.
All of my life I have been anxiously
awaiting “to be” older. When I was a kid I couldn’t wait to be
double digits! 10 years old! Then I couldn’t wait to be a teenager…
13! To be 15, learner’s license! To be 16, driver’s license! To be
18, I am an adult, ha! To be 21, I’m a grown up… double Ha! Then,
finally, to be 25, because people will obviously take me more
seriously when I am 25 than they did at 22.
But now that I am 27, I am truly so
content to just BE 27. I mean, part of
me really cannot believe I am actually 27. Three years until 30? No
longer early or even mid 20s but late? And if I even think about
where my 18 or 21–year–old
self thought I would be right now, I
just have to laugh. I definitely thought I would be married, have a
few wild little boys running around, and definitely have a career.
But instead, I JUST received my degree 6
months ago, I live in a different country every
month, and I have a job that doesn’t pay; instead I live off of
generous donations that have forever changed my mind, heart and life.
I would like to think I am a little
wiser at 27 than my 18 or 21-year-old self. If I know anything now
that I didn’t know then, it is that you can’t plan your life. And
thank the Lord for that, because my life would be far less wonderful
if God left it up to me to plan it. Instead, the parts of life that
have nothing to do with my planning, those are the very best parts of
all. The people I never knew I would meet, the jobs I never planned
to have, the love formed in my heart for people and places I never
knew I would see or could love… those are my most treasured parts
of my life.
I’ve also learned that a specific age
or year doesn’t guarantee happiness. Being 18, 21, or 25 doesn’t mean
I will be any happier than I will be at 30, 40, or 50. Instead I
believe happiness comes from truly living every single day the best
you can, right where I “be”… whether that is an age I dislike
or a body I want to look a little different, or a hair cut or style I
can’t stand… Or a job or people that are challenging.
By simply honoring God, honoring
ourselves right where we currently are instead of where we want to
be, and honoring others exactly where they are not where they should
or shouldn’t be, that is how I believe I will live good days, weeks,
months, year and ultimately a good life. When we do that, we can look
at every day as an adventure! How can I love myself and others well
today? That’s a daily journey and adventure in itself! That is really
living!
As I look back on my 26 previous years
and what I’ve wished for myself, for my life, and for the coming
year.. it was more a burdensome prayer of desperation than a simple
candle blown wish. I was more often than not asking for a better man
or a better body… because surely that would change my life for the
better. What I also didn’t realize then that I do is that I didn’t
think I had control of making my everyday life beautiful… I thought
it belonged to someone or something else. Now I know that we have the
responsibility for taking control of our lives, of the parts we can
control!
This year I am happy and relieved to
say my birthday wish looked a whole lot different than my previous
years. Can I get a PTL (Praise The Lord)?! And I am going to break
the rule of not telling the wish and share it with you right now!
Because you see, like the serenity prayer says, we CAN change some
things in our lives, as well as not being able to change others. All
we really need is the wisdom to know the difference. I can control
parts of my life… like choosing happiness, choosing to love others
and to love this life. Choosing to follow Jesus. Choosing to forgive.
Choosing to walk in love. And then there
are things I can not control… like when and where I will fall in
love, if I have little boys or girls, both or
any one day, and when I will leave this earth and spend
eternity with Jesus…
If you read my last blog, you know I
wrote about how I have learned what exactly the LOVE I’ve wanted all
my life actually IS… and not only what love is but also how to live
it… or as the Bible says, how to walk in it.
Just like learning to walk, my learning
to walk in love has come with quite a few falling downs. And what I
have learned on this bumpy journey of letting God and others love me,
as well as truly loving others, is that I will never love if it is
with conditions. If I think loving someone is a reaction to how they
make me feel or if they first love or accept me, then I do not know
love. In contrary, love is truly unconditional… with no strings,
with no reason, just an independent action that comes solely on
knowing the perfect love that only comes from knowing a perfect God.
Secondly, and maybe even most
importantly I’ve learned I will never be perfect;
I will get it wrong sometimes, and because I am human and not
perfect like God, some days I will actually choose to love myself
more than others; I will simply choose not to love someone because of
my own selfish conditions. But in the grand scheme of things, that is
okay too, because God loves me when I am loving others like He loves
me and when I am a selfish mess and loving only myself. That is the
gospel and that is the most precious gift of all, and because of that
perfect gift, I can wake up, ask for forgiveness, and with His help,
try again.
What my birthday wish is for this year
is that this year will be my best one yet, which may seem a little
vague, but you see I believe wishes are the true desires of our heart
and I know in this life I can only do so much and the rest is up to
God. And see, I believe that God is truly the greatest one upper
there ever was or ever will be. You bring him all you can, and He can
make it into more than your wildest dreams! If you don’t believe me,
crack open your Bible, that book is FULL of those stories. God takes
simple wishes, dreams, and desires and goes well over and beyond
anything imaginable. Or as the Bible says, “immeasurably more than
you can ask or imagine.” And I have found that the Bible really is
true, because God has done more in my life these last 5 months than I
absolutely could have dreamed or imagined! And I believe He is just
getting started!
What I can do is what I have control
over, and what I have control over are my daily actions and reactions
to the things I cannot control. This is what I hope those actions and
reactions look like starting now, in my 27th year and as
long as He has me here in this beautiful world.
I want to intentionally reflect God’s
love to everyone I encounter.
I want to see Him in the many ways He
constantly shows up but I often miss when I am distracted by trying
to control every situation and person around me. I want to see Him
through the sunrises and sunsets of at least 8 different countries
that I will visit in my 27th year, through words of
encouragement and “miss yous” from friends and family back home
and through the love of His people of every religion, culture,
ethnicity and more.
I want to be the friend, sister,
daughter, cousin, granddaughter, aunt, etc. who loves not just
when it is convenient for me, but who anyone can call any hour of the
night and I will answer and be there in any way I’m needed.
I want to see every day as an adventure
in making people smile, laugh, or cry by seeing God in the ways I
tell stories or say crazy things, in the way I laugh and cry
simultaneously when I’m overjoyed, the way I recall every book I read
or song I sing or sermon I listen to… that I will inevitably pass
on the message of the hope, of the glory and peace of God in the many
ways He loves to seek and touch our hearts.
I want to no longer wait for the love I
already have… in God, in family, in friends, but instead revel in
it daily, to love loving the people God has strategically and
graciously placed in my life and to not miss any opportunity to show
this great, great love to them.
I want to no longer listen to the
devil, to the great deceiver, when he tells me “what I don’t have”
and “what I’m not” but instead I want to constantly point to each
person, place, thing I see, feel, believe in, love, protect, care
about, am overjoyed in, and without a doubt say, “Look at all I
have! In Christ I have more than enough, but still He pours out
blessings in sunrises and ocean waves, in friends and familiar faces,
in children, in grandparents, in family near and far, in the warm
sunshine and a cool breeze, in tall skyscrapers and mountains
peaks… in a place to call home on earth and one for eternity, in
UGA football games and changing leaves in Fall, in watching kids
you’ve helped grow into healthy, happy adolescents, students, and
athletes. In seeing your lifelong friends marry and start families of
their own. In all the seasons of life, the ups and downs, I have it
all, all that I need.”
I want to fall in love every single
day, over and over again, with the same people, with different
people, with old places and new places, with cups of coffee,
familiarity, change, hope, the future, the past, my Southern roots…
oh there are so many things to love every day… to claim each as
gifts, to claim as mine!
I want to love my body and treat it
like the temple that God says it is. I want to not beat it into
submission but love it into the blooming life it has always been.
I want to have a job I am passionate
about, one where I wake up every day excited to pour my life into it.
I want to make a difference in the
lives of teen girls. To be a small group leader in middle school or
high school, to be their mentor, their friend, their confidante,
their shoulder to cry on and their ear to listen. I want to tell them
how special they are and that God loves them and how their body is
perfect just how God made it. That it is sacred and that it shouldn’t
be shared with anyone but the man God made to respect it and love it
forever. The man who has proven he is that man in many ways but
mostly by respecting their decision to wait until marriage to share
the deepest parts of themselves, body and soul.
I want to walk or bike more than I
drive a car. To walk or bike to work, the grocery store, to church,
almost any and everywhere that I possibly can.
I want to raise a Golden Retriever and
name him Tupelo or Honey after one of my favorite Van Morrison songs.
I want to save more money than I spend
and give generously back to my community, to a missionary, to
nonprofit organizations that are making a difference in this world.
I want to listen more than I talk (this
will be the hardest of all!) To listen
to others’ stories, hearts, dreams, wishes and beautiful redemptive
stories.
I want to write more.
I want to constantly be reading a
nonfiction book.
I want to LOVE people’s differences!
People’s very own experiences, stories, personalities, etc. And I
want to share those stories in writing.
I want when people to see me to see a
light that comes not from myself but only from Heaven, from God, from
my hope in Christ… the hope of forever knowing I am genuinely
loved, forgiven, paid for by the greatest price of all and that I am
walking in that hope and perfect love every day. I want to be a city
on a hill shining brightly and I know I can be, because I have that
light shining in me, showing the world there is a life of peace
waiting for them through Jesus.
