Dear 20-year-old Liz

Dear 20-year-old Liz,

            I know you’re probably busy dressing up for thrift-store prom night at the skating rink, but if you could put your hairspray and tease comb down for a minute, I have something to say.  All you can see in front of yourself is the present, so this may be difficult, but I wrote some findings you’ll discover over the next ten years.  Listen carefully, it’ll be a wild ride.

1.     Dinner doesn’t make itself.  Enjoy the free, hot, and always ready cafeteria food while you can.  Turns out, when you grow up, no one makes dinner for you.  You’ll spend many nights after work searching for something to make and end up with peanut butter and jelly, cereal, or eggs.  You’ll never be a great cook, but you’ll slowly add meals to your repertoire.  But, it’s not going to be easy and you’ll throw away burned chicken more times than you’ll eat it.  Just prepare yourself. And your stomach. 

2.     These anxious thoughts you have can and will cripple you.  There’s medicine that can help that.  You’ll have mixed feelings about taking medicine for your anxiety, but you realize it’s worth it.  You are relieved that it turns the volume down of the terrifying thoughts that your mind fixates on.  You won’t talk about it much, but you know your mind isn’t like everyone else’s.  But you also come to terms with that, and it turns out to be okay.

3.     That toxic, traumatizing, and degrading relationship you had for three years will continue to affect you.  You’ll invest in counseling and EMDR to work through the pain.  You will have dreams weekly for the next ten years about that time in your life.  You’ll do anything to be released from these memories. They will leave, come back, and leave again.  The good news is that you’ll have the most patient and empathetic husband that is committed to working through it with you.  He’ll remind you that that doesn’t define you.  You might wish that you could come to terms with this and see it as a growing experience and be done with it.  But, by age thirty, you still regret this relationship and the affect it has had on you.  Maybe one day, you’ll respect it and see that it was a piece of your story.  Right now, at age 20, you’re in the middle of it.  There’s not much to be said, except for wait.  It’s about to all fall apart.

4.     You think you can change the world.  Right now, you think you will live among the poor and are disgusted with the idea of a husband, a house, and 2.5 kids.  You think you’ll live overseas and become fluent in Spanish.  You won’t.  You’ll get pregnant three weeks after saying “I do,” and you’ll cry for eight of those nine months as you see your dreams flash before your eyes.  You’ll see this as a failure; a failure to what you’ve wanted to do for the Kingdom.  You’ll struggle with feeling like you’re losing your passion and you’ve “sold out” to the American way.  This will eat at your core for years, and you’ll only be able to put words to it maybe three times within the next ten years.  Somewhere along the way, you get placed at a school and a role where you get to communicate and advocate for the poor, the refugee, the beaten, the lost, the uneducated, and you realize that you have a unique opportunity to show genuine love and provide resources for those in your community.  You get to stand up for kids and families as your job.  You see faces and names, not just an idea.  Maybe, you haven’t failed.  You’ll learn that love and serving others looks different in your life than you thought it would.  It won’t make sense to other people, but you’ll do it anyways.

5.     You’re a people pleaser.  During the next ten years, you’ll work through being a recovering people pleaser.  You’ll go through counseling and realize that you don’t have to say, “yes” to everything. You have to say “no” to some things so you can say, “yes” to other things. You’ll spend the next decade learning that not everyone likes you.  You’ll work with people that don’t like you and say mean and hurtful things that cut you to the core.  They’re talk about you behind your back, and you’ll begin to question your purpose there.  When you are twenty, you will be devastated and over compensate when this happens.  You’ll think everyone has to like you.  But as you grow, you’ll learn to be self-aware and kind regardless.  You’ll change what you can, without changing who you are.  And if some people don’t like that, you’ll accept that.

6.     High waist pants will change your life.  At first, you’ll be resistive, because, let’s face it, you’ll never pair it with a crop top.  But once you slip into a pair, you’ll realize you lose five pounds instantly.  That pooch you have from those boys will never ever ever go away.  But you can shove in that little guy with those high-waited suckers.  Embrace it.  It’s like a little magic show every morning.  But you’re right, you’ll never wear a crop top.

7.     Not everything is black and white.   You grew up thinking you knew the Bible and you had the authority to speak it into everyone else’s life based on the Sunday School lesson you heard last week where you also got a star sticker for attendance. Turns out, as you get older, you realize that the absolutes are simple: love and grace and humility.  Maybe the details aren’t as important.  You’ll see the hate shown by “Christians” to homosexuals, illegal immigrants, women who have abortions, the homeless, women, those with other skin colors, and your heart with break.  Your strategy is to join the conversations with those people and show love. Show grace. And show humanity.  And as you engage in conversation with those people, you realize that Jesus may be more radical than you thought.  It just isn’t like him to cast out people in large masses for being different.  So maybe everything isn’t simply right or wrong.  Maybe grace stretches wider than our rules.

8.     Dry Shampoo is what has been missing in your life.  I know you wash and style your hair every day, but this is going to rock your world.  In about six years, you’ll hear about this mystical thing called dry-shampoo. You’ll say, “Wait, I’m sorry. What did you say?  I can sleep 30 minutes longer each morning, by spraying this on my head?  Is this real life?”  You’ll try it for $3, and it’s all this and more.  Turns out your hair can be “trained,” and you will only wash your hair once a week.  What!  I know your mind is blown.  So keep on with the daily Herbal Essence that you asked for on your Christmas list.  But your shampoo budget and getting ready time will be cut immensely soon.  I know, it sounds too good to be true.  Hashtag Jesus.

   

9. Find someone with a beautiful core who knows what they’re about.  You’ll be on the lookout for someone to spend your life with.  You’ll be terrified when a guy who’ve known for awhile pursues you.  Intensely pursues you.  He’ll be pretty awkward and tell you on your first date what he will be naming his first boy.  He wants to be upfront so you can run if that’s a deal breaker.  You’ll date several nice guys, but this one will feel different.  He’ll tell you that he never dated or kissed anyone before you, because he knew what he wanted and was willing to wait.  He falls in love with you one night where you pour out the pain in your life in front of a room full of people.  He will watch from the back and appreciate your honesty and vulnerability.  He will point you toward love and grace.  He will point you toward freedom from guilt and shame.  He will point you toward not pleasing others when you’re running around Nashville trying to make people happy. He will point you toward balance.  You guys will disagree, but you’ll always work it out.  A lot of people will be intimidated by him and not understand him.  You used to try to hide the intense parts of him, but now, you learn to appreciate that and help him round out the rough edges.  Things will always be changing.  His mental illness will change. His job will change.  His friends will change.  His hobbies will change.  His body will change.  His creative energies will change.  But his core doesn’t change.  What he’s about doesn’t change.  While you’re getting ready to start your relationship with him, be ready.  Be ready to be challenged to be a better person.  To be a better lover to the stranger.  To get outside your comfort zone. To be friends with people that are different.  But you’ll always have to order the pizza, because he’s scared to talk on the phone.  You’ll also have to help him navigate social situations.  But you can look forward to a relationship of give and take and a little bit of crazy every now and then. 

10. Everyone knows a good letter has to end in an even number.  So I’ll reserve number ten for what I am still learning.  When you reach thirty, you don’t feel like you’ve learned a lot, until you start writing it down.  So for now, here’s nine and one to grow on, since you’ll always be growing.

So 20-year-old Liz, keep on.  Things will get better. They will get more confusing. They will get exhausting.  They will get busy.  They will get exciting.  Stay the course and enjoy those size 6 pants and bikinis while you can.

Love,

30-year-old Liz