Saturday, May 19, 2012

16 and 26

Ok, I know, I'm turning 27 in June, but the title was so fitting for what I'm feeling now. Life right now is so hard for me to grasp because I feel like I was 16 yesterday. That I just got my driver's license, that college and freedom where right around the corner. I was going to leave Powder Springs, even Georgia and NEVER LOOK BACK. It was only yesterday that I knew I was never going to have children, that my mom was just going to have to get used to the fact that Jennifer was going to be the daughter to do that. That I wasn't going to get married until I was 30 and I was going to run my own business! I even think it was at sixteen that I thought I was still going to be a cheerleader in college as well... My dreams changed so much in four years of highschool I truly can't remember where my heart was at, at 16. It was only yesterday that my parents surprised me with a Sweet 16 birthday party after me and mom spent a weekend in Ormond Beach. It was only yesterday I knew I had never met my future husband (whereas most of my friends already had...) and didn't know WHEN that was going to happen. (Funny to think it was only four short years ahead). I can just close my eyes and I am right there! In highschool, future wide open, options...well, not limitless, but definitely lots of them:).

And I open my eyes, and I'm right here in my sun room. Typing to you so quickly while my 7 mo old sleeps. I did go to college in GA, I didn't necessarily leave GA behind and NEVER LOOK BACK like I promised my teenage angst self that I would. I did get my degree and use it. Until it was time to come home to be a stay at home wife, then mother. I never did own my own business, which is such a good thing, cause I would have run it into the ground! I did give my mother a grandchild, one of many. (Maybe...) I got married at 22. A very farrrrrrrrrrrr cry from the independent, world-traveling 30 year old I had planned to be. And yet, I still close my eyes and feel my options are... well, there are still lots of them. It's probably because God Graced me with an amazing husband who never says "no" to my dreams. He mostly just shrugs his shoulders and says, "If that's what you want to do, I'm for it." Literally, there has never been a curve ball I haven't thrown at him that's he hasn't done that to. I love that crazy man.


But do you know what else feels so good? So, natural? That my life that it is right now, feels so right. Like when I sit at church in service and Tim's arm is around me and I'm snuggled up right under him, listening to our pastor together, and thinking about my little girl how she is probably having so much fun in the nursery. This is right where I'm supposed to be. Or when I'm at the grocery store and the twenty-something check-out boy is talking about college and what he wants to do and how he wants to own a home by 25. And I just look at him and I truly hope for the best for him when I say "good luck!" It feels right. It feels right that I spend my days cleaning the house, taking care of Karis, and trying to live my life as an example for our little girl. Obviously, my life looks so much different than I had imagined it. But I only choke when I listen to Satan's negative words over my life. Because truly, I feel right about where I sit at this moment.


I am a dichotomy. Do I love to dance to music, have girl spend-the-night parties, watch romantic comedies, go to weddings, by expensive dresses and shoes to go on a night out on the town, sing at the top of my lungs? Absolutely. I am still all of those fun girl things still.

Do I love going to bed early, cuddled up against Tim, walking hand in hand pushing Karis around a park, changing dirty diapers, wondering about Karis while I'm in church, seeing her smile at people in the grocery store, cleaning the house and having others over? Absolutely, and more. I love being an old woman in 26 year-old skin as well.

I hope the dichotomy never dies. I hope when I'm 88 (which, by the way, is the year I'm supposed to die, according to a website I filled out for a sociology class I took) I can close my eyes and feel 16 all over again.

I hope you have much life to live yourself,
LA

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