I Met My Younger Self…

I’ve seen this trending post on several social media platforms and it’s made me reflective. If I had the chance to, what would I tell my younger self? In a way, I think I’ll sort of get to experience this probably sooner than I can imagine…I have 3 daughters after all. So, if I could meet my younger self, this is the way I think our conversation might go…

I met my younger self for drinks…

She ordered a cold Coors Light…little hair of the dog from the night before.

I had to settle for ice water.

We both looked tired, for very different reasons.

She’d partied the night away, trying to feel anything other than misery, and to forget, even just for a little bit, that her best friend had died and that her boyfriend had just dumped her on her 22nd birthday.

I’d spent the day cooking and cleaning and doing laundry for a household of 7.

She noticed my belly and asked, “How much longer?”

“Three months,” I replied…knowing what was coming next.

She almost choked on the beer she’d just drank, coughed, and said, “Holy s**t! You look miserable and HUGE already!”

I settled for rolling my eyes at her when I really felt like throat-punching her.

“Yeah. Enjoy those size 3’s while you can, they don’t last,” she was SO clueless. Miserable? Not me. Exhausted, yes. There’s a big difference. As for huge…yeah, 6 babies in 10 years will do that to you.

“I’m SOO stressed about finding a job,” she confessed.

In my head, I wanted to poke her in the eye. Stressed? Girl, you got no clue.

Instead, I just chuckled and said, “Try not to worry too much over it. Your career won’t last very long before you do what you were always meant to anyway.”

“I’m so lonely and tired of getting my heart broken.” She had tears in her eyes and I felt so sorry for her because I remember how badly it hurt.

“I know,” I told her. “But quit trying to look so hard to find the right one or make each one into THE one. God’s got him picked. He’s the calm to the storm, and the one you’ve been looking for all this time.”

“WHO? TELL ME! I was reading my devotional last night before bed and my mind was just racing with everything that’s happened and I was wracking my brain trying to figure out where I’d gone wrong and all the sudden, I heard this voice - and I couldn’t decide if I’d finally snapped and gone completely crazy or if it was actually God - but it said, “Quiet your heart. Quiet your mind and trust me. I’ve got this handled.”

I smiled at her, twirled the ring on my left hand, and patted my HUGE stomach she’d pointed out with my right.

“Hang on to that. Because He does, in more ways than you can fathom or understand.”

“Okay, I’ll try.”

She chugged her beer and told me she needed to go because she had a date. She wasn’t all that excited about it, but was going anyway.

I cringed because I knew what was coming - another curveball, although, maybe the most important one. After all…God blessed the broken road…

I told her I needed to get home in time to put the kids to bed.

We paid for our drinks and walked out to the parking lot.

She seemed like she wanted to say something so I just waited while she gathered her nerve.

“Kyla, do all my plans and dreams come true?” she asked me.

She looked so hopeful that I really felt kind of bad answering her.

“Nope.” I said bluntly.

Her face fell, she just nodded her head and turned to walk away, with one more disappointment to try to drown later.

I couldn’t leave her with that, so I called out to her.

She turned and looked at me - younger, still pretty naïve, and really dejected from the curveballs life had hurled at her lately.

“Your life doesn’t turn out one damn bit like the way you have it planned, Kyla. But it’s better, so much better. Do your dreams come true? The most important ones, yeah. Do your plans come to fruition? Some of them by now have. Some may still, a lot never will, and a lot will change. The things that seem important to you now? Hell. You’ll forget a lot of them ever even mattered. But yes, your life is SO good. Even on the hard days when you have given everything you have and somehow, you have to manage to find more from somewhere to pour out…even when God takes one more person away before you’re ready to say goodbye…even when you’re sure you’ve crossed the bridge from just mom-crazy and exhausted to downright certifiable…it’s more beautiful than you can even imagine. Just hold on, you’ll get there. And it’s worth it.”

Her eyes lit up and we both smiled before we turned and went our separate ways again.