24

This morning I woke up knowing that there was a song I needed to listen to. There was a memory that brought this realization to the forefront to f my mind, which is that when I was about 16 I heard a song that felt sad and solemn to listen to and I remember telling my self that I wonder if I would understand it more when the time came. That time came this morning; the song was 24 by Switchfoot.

Twenty-four. I turned twenty-four today and I feel like I’m in twenty fourth place. Life is hard right now. My family and I are in a really hard season. One that I have found looking at disbelief at some of the rubble and say “We can’t catch a break, this is not normal…” I have found more of my tears this week that I have had the last couple months. Yet there is hope. I can choose hope.

I have never been the hopeful person in a crowd; in fact I usually am the one waiting for the other foot to drop. Hope required risking; it requires courage and my heart.

24 encapsulates the tension of today. Life feels hard, and 23 was a rough year. I am left with two choices as I go into this new year of my life. I can expect the absolute worst and give up now or I can choose to live new life. 24 is a time where college is now gone and the year after college has passed so what’s next? For some it’s a disillusionment of choices, but for others it’s a change for new life.

I want to see miracles and wrestle an angel for more than a name.

I want to know that my life is going to be lived to the fullest each and every day. Part of what I started teaching myself and owning is that there is not just good and bad, life is found in the tension of the both/and. You must acknowledge the hurt and the bad to understand the good. If I don’t that I miss out on the opportunities to experience all the good.

I wrote this the day of my 24th birthday, a year ago tomorrow. 24 was not what I thought it was going to be. I am so different…. I am so broken; I feel exceptionally lost, scared, and wrecked; yet I know that I am more alive and rooted then ever before.

What I hoped for a year ago is so different yet so similar to what I am hoping for now. I think I am just more real and more ready to live into it then I was a year ago.

I am more aware of certain things in my life. So much of what I live out of is the tension that life keeps holding and the acknowledgment of the scarcity that has lurked over my life for so long. I lived waiting to be invisible, hurt, left, mocked, put down, called stupid and naive, failed, disappointed, rejected, taken advantage of, and a number of other things but that is not all my story will hold. These things have happened and I am sure they will continue to happen but I’m tired of living out of scarcity and fear. I was so afraid for so long but I learned to hide it really well. I started to allow my self to be seen but as a rather fierce force. Allowing just enough transparency to be there but a lot of the story I told or the things I said did not hold very much weight any more. It was the past.

 I have done a lot of work in my life but in the last year I think more changed for me than I expected. 24 by Switchfoot feel like it says everything about my year. I understand now that my 16-year-old self was right, I understand this song in a way that I never could have before. I cant even put complete thought’s to all of what has changed in me because I am still in the midst of it, but "He's raising the dead in me". I know this because I can look at pictures of my self from growing up and not feel disappointed or like I have to shut down completely because shame is overtaking me. Because this year I went back and found the little girl who was so kind, she was quiet, passionate, innocent, unapologetic, and so whimsical. I found her and allowed my self to let everything she is become part of me again. I stopped being afraid of what I was capable of because I am not dangerous. I will make mistakes but at the root of me I want to be kind and I don’t want to hurt people. I can speak truth about my story in full and still love what my life has been. I am more ok with the messy because there are certain things that I am not ok with loosing. I know that I don’t want to have 6 escape-roots in every part of my life where I know how to keep my self-alive with whatever life sends my way.

I know that I have welcomed the heartache even thought it makes it excruciatingly hard to breath because each time I intake air it reminds me that I am still alive, that means that I have more to do here. I own my brokenness, fear, anger, mistakes, hurt, hope and my story because I want to say at the end that I dared greatly in all I did.

I have 24 hours left to be 24. I want it to count, but I’m also ready for 25. I am ready for hope. I know it’s going to hurt like hell, I know that I’m scared about loosing myself but maybe the truth is that I finally found myself. Maybe God does have good in store for me, and maybe I’m not just a puzzle piece in everyone else’s story but that there is something in story for me. I was asked by a lovely friend this weekend what is something I did that I’m proud of myself for that reflects who I want to be. My answer what that I had hoped for so many thing in the last few months for my life but there was some disappointment that had come because of that hope. I named that hope is really hard for me and that I know that I am ok but really I was struggling in the midst of the disappointment with the fact that I like hoping, that it feels “really becoming on me”. I choose hope and what better time to choose it than Fall because everyone knows that Fall feels like hope to me.

This is a picture that a good friend of mine took a month or so ago that I love. It's one of me that shows who I am today, but it also shows a women that i'm excited to be and that i'm proud of most of the time..............

Ok God, here’s to hoping.  Please be with me when it’s hard, but please let me stay kind and lovely in you. Thank you for 24 and here’s to 25.