Dear Andrea

Dear Young 21 Year Old Andrea:

Guess what, your life is not over.  Currently in life you are struggling with who you are as a person, being tortured from living a double life and deciding what you really want out of life.  You will be okay.  You will also be a completely different person in a matter of years.  Embrace the life changing experiences that are about to come your direction.

Right now you are in your “recovering home-schooler” years and ultimately you will realize how much the home-school years actually provided a foundation for life going forward.  Yes, you should move with a band to NY when you are 23.  In this move you will discover that there is more to life than you.  You will also discover that there are different types of love.  You will develop unbreakable bonds with the friends you move with and spend the next few years with.  Cherish the friend Thanksgivings, the Laundry Mat nights, the Erie Canal walks, the band nights, sitting on the porch during warm thunderstorms, and getting stuck in the snow in your Honda (repeatedly).  Wherever life takes you, you will always have the time in NY and the sense of joy / friendship / community and pure love that was experienced even though times were hard.  Also, when you are stuck in a Walmart parking lot/camping in South Dakota for a week……buy the red camping chair as soon as the van breaks down.  Trust me on this one.

By the way, you will break your heart repeatedly.  By breaking your own heart, I mean that you will like guy after guy…..really like them, and think they are the one…..never date them……they will be oblivious to you or lead you on…..and then they will meet someone else and fall in love.  So they won’t break your heart, but you will break your own by placing so much of your identity and future dreams on the person you currently like.   I’d tell you not to do this, and your friends will tell you not to do this, but the reality is that you have to do this in order to move forward in the future. You will learn from emotional pain and it will be hard.  You will also learn your real identity and Who it is based in.  Some tips for recovery are bubble baths, baking/cooking new foods, girl nights, coffee with your good friend and also connecting/arguing with God. 

I know you always wanted to be a stay-at-home mom to a bunch of kids, have a country house in a small town with gardens and pets, and be really involved in ministry.  While this is a noble ambition, it won’t occur in the next ten years.  You will actually have a pretty intense career and be involved in many leadership roles (who would’ve thought?) that will stretch and grow you.  You will begin to realize that God has other plans for the next ten years, and possibly longer.  You will however have lots of young people in your life to cherish and love (12 nieces/nephews and godsons on top of that!).  You will also be more involved with ministry than you ever thought and connecting with others in your mutual pain, joys and life moments.  Even though it will sometimes not seem like it, God knows what He is teaching you.

I don’t have much that I want to tell you, because I don’t want to ruin it.  I want you to always have hope for what could be and always stay positive, even in the devastating times.  There will be devastating times.  You will become a beautiful woman, no, I don’t mean that you will be a hot model (but you’ll be decently cute, at least a little).  I mean that the different types of pain you will go through will lead to a woman with endurance, encouragement, love of others, confidence sprinkled with shyness, generosity, driven/hard-working, with hopefully some wisdom and a reliance on God.  Honestly, you will have many faults and failures too, but I’ll let you figure out what those are and continue to bring them to God.  You won’t be perfect.

I know you will constantly battle with thoughts of why you remain single.  I’m going to let you in on a secret.  There will be times that you think it is because of your weirdo personality.  It’s not.  That personality will be cherished by many.  There will be times you will think it is because you are ugly and some guy just hasn’t seen past your ugliness to see your personality.  It’s not.  Just stop.   There will be times you will blame God.  There will be times you will blame yourself.  

Here is the secret.  You are single because the timing is not right for you.  You may feel like you are waiting, and waiting, and waiting for life to start.  You’ll continue this thought process until you are about 30 and then snap out of it.  There is and never will be anything “wrong” with you and it is not because you are not good enough for a man or relationship.  You are human with flaws, and so is whoever you will end up with.  God only knows the right timing.  Think of everything you will learn over the next ten years and things that you wouldn’t learn if things were different.  Who knows, maybe you are single because your future husband is still learning things that he needs to learn before meeting you.  You’d rather he learn them now since you’re stuck once you’re committed!  Maybe, someday you’ll meet a guy that you can be yourself around and instantly connect with rather than shutting down and not talking to.  My advice:  Don’t wait.  Live life instead and love and enjoy those around you.  Live life with others and constantly seek God.  But don’t painfully wait.

Lovingly,

Andrea (ten years from the future)

PS, I’ll write to you again when I am 41 to see how those ten years went!