How your dreams change

Yesterday,I watched a recording of my Senior reception in college . There I was, 21, 80's clothes, bleach blond hair, playing Lucy in a scene from the Peanut's musical I performed in a few years earlier. It is so strange watching yourself 22 years later. It is like watching someone else. Many things occurred to me as I watched this. People I miss and had forgotten suddenly run through my mind. Memories of fun experiences during college start flooding my thoughts. How strange that I never saw certain things. Your perspective is so off when you are 21. You think you know it all, but you don't. You know nothing. There is so much life left to survive, experience, and savor. So, watching my 21 year old, bleach blond, wrinkle and cellulite free self on a recording is strange and sobering. I start to try to remember who I was and how I thought back then. I had so many hopes and dreams about my future. I had no reason to think that all of them couldn't come true. Then again, I had very little confidence in my ability to make them all happen at that point in my life. I see my young self as if I was someone else. I see someone who was talented, intelligent, curious, loving, open, vulnerable, hopeful, excited and determined. I didn't get it then. I see it now. I was actually someone I would be very proud to call my daughter. And, I couldn't see that. I gave up on making my parents proud and did my own thing which is such a shame. I hear the Bible verses read and thoughts poured out at a reception at a Christian college that I had a privilege to be a part of and the gravity, the importance, the priority those verses and thoughts should have had in my heart and life just didn't register with me back then. I figured I could make it on my own. I didn't need my parents. I didn't need my God. I was going to conquer the world by living on the edge and pushing all the limits. Yeah. That would be fun and ground breaking. No one ever tried to pretend as if they could live one day at at time and ignore the consequences.

So, I watch this young girl with so much potential and can't believe what she chose to do with her life. Don't get me wrong. God finally pulled me back into his arms. But, for so many years I wasted time, talent, energy and life on me. Selfish. Purposeless. Chaotic. That young girl thought she had the world by the tail. She thought she would find a man who would worship the ground she walked on. She thought he would then marry her, take care of her and give her a home full of laughing, amazing children. She thought it would all be so simple. I watched her and felt such pain and compassion for her. She had no idea what she would face in her life. She had no idea the places she would put herself because of her own stubbornness and bad choices.

She especially had no idea that children would never be a part of her future. That idea NEVER crossed her mind. If she had known, would she have made a different choice? Would she have planned more carefully, chosen more wisely, followed God more closely?

I wrote a poem that year. I read it at the reception. It was poignant. It was heartfelt. It talked about starting the second chapter of our lives. It talked about taking God with us on this next journey. It talked about what wonderful things we had experienced at college. She meant it all. She knew she would have lifetime friendships with those girls. And she did. She knew that she would have adventures in her career and make a difference in her world. And she did. She knew that she would find a wonderful man who would love her in ways she never deserved. And she did. She knew that one day she would be Mom to children that would love her and test her just as she had for her parents. But, she didn't.

Wow. How your life turns out differently than your young self thought it would. In some ways, better. In some ways, not so great. If you had told that girl that she would never be a Mom, she would have been devastated. But, this woman, she deals with that reality with perseverance and peace. The God that girl abandoned is the God who saves this woman from emptiness. How can anyone love someone who ignored them, laughed at them, disrespected them and turned from them? How your dreams change as you realize that what really matters is that kind of love. It will never cease to amaze this woman. That girl never would have understood.