17 year old me knew a lot…or at least she thought she did. The older I get, the more I recognize she didn’t have it quite as together as she thought at the time, and that there was probably a lot of sage advice she should have paid attention to. The sci-fy nerd in me longs for the day a time machine will let me Back To The Future myself, giving that sage life advice that will save me countless hours of heartache, worry, tears and mint chocolate chip ice cream. Until that day happens, however, I’ve been given an ideal platform to share some of this wisdom in the hopes that it may save you a few hours of heartache, worry, tears and a maybe even a few of those pints of ice cream.
So without further adieu, here are:
10 Things I Wish I Would Have Truly Known at 17
- Your mom is right far more often than she gets credit for, and has done so much more for your entire family than you ever saw. Give her more grace than you are inclined to be passing out: she’s only human, even with her flaws she is a truly exceptional mother, she deserves it, and you will come to treasure grace more than you realize right now.
- Your dad is one of the biggest blessings in your life, you just don’t know it yet. Even when you do know it, you’ll have to fight through the discomfort to continue embracing it, because there will still be miscommunication, tears and heartache. It is one of the first relationships in your life (though nowhere near the last one) that will require quite a bit of work to repair a couple of decades of broken communication. The work is hard, and there will be times when you’ll want to throw in the towel, but I urge you…don’t give up. It’s worth it, I promise.
- You’ll come to a place where you genuinely adore your too-large-family and all of their zany, often flat-out-weird ways, but you don’t always have to agree with them. Nor do you need them to always agree with you. Say it with me slowly: I don’t always need them to agree with me, to be doing something worthwhile. You’ve got to test out your own salvation (and life) with fear and trembling, and sometimes that means that you won’t always arrive at the same conclusions they do.
- You were right about needing distance. Treasure your space, but don’t forget to invite people into it. You are just enough introvert that without a safe space to retreat to, it can feel like you are losing your mind. Don’t let people make you feel selfish or lazy for needing that, but don’t fully retreat into your own little hermit world either. Find healthy boundaries and stick to them. It’s lonely by yourself, and you resort to trying to be self-protective when alone too long.
- It’s okay to love yourself. It’s hard, and it’s often exhausting, but it’s worth doing. It’s also okay to let people in on the fact that you think there might be something wrong with the way you love yourself. You won’t get the help you need until you start to let some people in on the murky parts that you can’t fix on your own
- Some of the best opportunities in your life will seem entirely too big and scary for you to accomplish. You like being naturally good at things and tend to stick with the ones you excel at and shy away from the ones that make you feel lacking. Some of the stuff you attempt will fail miserably, but even more will surprise you with successes along the way. Do things that scare you, say yes to things (within reason) that aren’t totally comfortable. I am not at all advocating for throwing all reservations out the window and doing anything regardless of the consequences – your gut will save you an immense amount of potential trouble by avoiding things that are dangerous and laden with pitfalls. But there are loads of opportunities around you that are scary because you might not be good at them at first, or you might have to be vulnerable and end up getting hurt…consider doing them anyway. The list of things that is immediately terrifying to you is unfortunately long, but don’t settle for things that don’t make your heart pound a little. Be brave, and trust Jesus in scary places.
- You will be one of those people who love Jesus and talks about him in weird ways. You can fight it for a long time, but eventually you’ll find yourself using “troll-jesus” in an entirely affectionate way. You get called to fast a lot (which if I know you, garnered an eye roll. It’s not what I would call fun, but it never fails to produce fruit), and you end up having conversations with complete strangers about things the Lord tells you to talk about. It will weird you out, it will feel entirely too charismatic, it will be uncomfortable, you won’t always see the pay off or purpose behind it, but this life with Jesus, even when it’s weird, is most definitely worthwhile.
- You will also find yourself ripped from your very sheltered, comfortable existence when you actually let yourself see the agony and the joys in the rest of the world. Don’t avoid it because you are worried about who you’ll be when the chips have fallen – see it, recognize it and feel it. It’s hard and painful sometimes, but it’s the only way you recognize that God called you to be in it too.
- Boys. You have this ideology at this point in your life that you will be married by the time you graduate from college. You are entirely too cynical to admit this out loud to anyone, and are currently on a year long fast from boys where you start to discover Jesus in ways you didn’t know were possible. You worry if there will ever be a boy who can see you, and love you for exactly who you are. Spoiler: There is no ring by spring in your college experience. But there are some really wonderful and really atrocious friendships with men (and a few funny stories about dates you didn’t anticipate too). They will shape what you think you want in a partner, and then God comes in and changes what you thought you wanted – time and time again. You don’t realize it yet, but much of what you believe to be true about the types of guys that will be attracted to you is wrong. There are a lot of lies you have to wade through to get down to the truth, and you’ll often be quick to forget the truth at first. There is nothing wrong with you if you make it to 18 without a significant other, or 21, or even 30. Yes it’s older than your parents were when they got married, but you’ll experience so many ways that you aren’t them in the years to come, and come to see that it’s okay to set your own pace on those things. Above all – wait on Jesus to bring the right one. You’ll spend too many hours wondering if this boy or that boy is the one God is preparing for you. When the time comes, you’ll know. Jesus isn’t going to leave you hanging on that – just be patient. Use that time to discover who you are, who Jesus made you to be, and the impact you can have on the world around you by letting him make your broken parts whole.
- Finally, life in general pretty much ends up nothing like you thought it would. You aren’t in medical school, you aren’t a doctor. You end up in a field that has everything to do with healthy living, it just isn’t at all what you thought. You might as well begin relaxing that death grip on control now, because it’s going to be years of the Lord being far more in control than you’ll ever be, and it’s going to stress you out. There will be far too many “what comes next” moments for your comfort, but it all works out, even if you don’t see how until you’re in the thick of it. God doesn’t ditch you when things get tricky, stressful or complicated. He leads you through some questionable places, many a result of choices you made, but he doesn’t leave you to do it alone. You don’t get married as young as your original to do list said you should, but you travel, go to a bunch of concerts, eat incredible food, meet wonderful people and have so much to be thankful for. Don’t wish it away for a spouse or a job or a life in the hazy future. So many unbelievably crazy, hard and wonderful things happen in the seasons of your life that you have already deemed “wasted space”, set aside for nothing more than waiting for life to start. Work hard, appreciate your insatiable curiosity about everything, and above all trust that if you’re following Jesus, your life, even if it deviates far from your 10 year plan, is not wasted.
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