Wednesday, November 30, 2011

26.

Well, as you can see, I am in fact still alive.

And in roughly 2 hours, I will be 26 years old.

Tomorrow I will be the age my mother was when she gave birth to me.

Yikes.

Most anyone will tell you that 26 is still, in fact, quite young. Consciously, practically, realistically--I know this. But year 25...it changed me. Truly, some of the sweetest and saddest moments of my life occurred in this year. Moments of feeling lost, feeling found. Feeling like I've been given more than is fair, and then feeling like nothing in life is ever fair at all.

I have learned to love another person, in spite of who I am. In spite of my own selfishness, my own fears, insecurities, and past hurts. What can only be described as growing pains, clawing through the shield of "me" and "my" that I'd constructed, to reveal a person who gives not because she has to but because she wants to, who loves not because she's required to but because she CAN. Through hectic weekdays and lazy Sunday afternoons. In wandering conversations, heated arguments, and waking, sometines, to a hand that finds mine, even fast asleep. If I have it my way, he and I will sleep that way until one of us ceases to breathe.

But if there's anything this year has taught me, it is that my plans, my assumptions, aren't always correct. My constantly growing and changing faith in God has been shaken by the unfairness of losing a friend much, much too young. But to find hope in that loss has given me an awareness that thankfully, I am simply not in control. We all know how well that's turned out in the past. A day hasn't passed that she hasn't crossed my mind, and hasn't reminded me that my life still isn't MINE. I was placed on this earth for a purpose--again, not mine.

Bearing that in mind, I welcome 26. Praying to be constantly aware that I am a temple, a vessel, and merely a channel through which God shares His love with the world. Yes, I'd also love to be a wife, a mother, a grandmother, etc, but those experiences are not guaranteed or owed to me. My goal this year, besides to lose 20 pounds and get my relationship with cheese in check, is to simply do what I know to be right. To take care of my body, to speak words of kindness, genuinely. To spend my money and my time on things that matter, things that last. To cherish the people who love me, and recognize that I am blessed to love THEM, and then do so selflessly and with 100% of who I am.

I will begin this year with a prayer. I will not begin year 26 with a resolution or a to-do list. Those put the ball in my court, and let's face it, my hand-eye coordination when it comes to anything played on a court leaves some things to be desired.

So, yeah. Happy Birthday to me. And many more, on channel 4, etc.

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