A Letter To My Daughter

I woke up today thinking about my daughter. The one who doesn’t exist yet. The one who might never exist, though I’ve already written her countless letters and etched her little notes on the corners of my diary pages. 

And like any other day of my life, when I wake up thinking about something, I make a moment out of it. I write it down. I don't forget it. Because I think there's a lot to say about the first thing you wake up in the morning thinking about. It's the thing that drives you out of bed. Or it's the thing that keeps you laying there. It's the first thing your mind drifts to after waking from a deep, deep sleep. Pay attention to what you wake up thinking about... It's more important than you think.

Anyhow. I tried to string some words together to make a letter pretty enough to present to my one day, some day daughter on the days when a mother's hug just won't do. And these are the words that befell my anxious fingertips.

To my One Day, Some Day Daughter:

This is a letter made for the day when you wake up, hair all knotted by the pull of your pillow, and stumble straight into the land of thick, thick heart break. The land where Confusion roams, Lies fall from the sky, but Opportunity waits at every street corner. The days when the missing is thick and the tears are aplenty. There will be them days. 

There will be them days when the rubble from your very own heartbreak will scream at you and try to snatch up your dreams and scarf down your desires and try to fix you up pretty in a box too tiny that God never made you for. 

He made you for dancing—for words too eloquent to say with more than a whispered voice—for tinsel delicately strewn on the branches of baby evergreens—for icing, thick and sugared on the tops of every little thing you touch. 

And while my heart aches to even envisage  you hurting- I would be naive to hope or say that no one will ever hurt you, break you, leave you, or betray you. But still, baby girl, I hope you fall in love. And I hope it hurts so bad. Because as One Republic says, "it's the only way you can know that you gave it all you had". 

And, just like everyone else, you will know the floor. It’s a common place that we all can relate to– the tears, the fetal position, the cold hard wood against your face. It’s like a second language we’ve all learned on our own. You will know the feeling of your hands and knees sunk deep into the carpet and the kind of weeping that makes you feel like your heart might just explode out of your chest.

And I’m only ever going to be able to tell you that love is a rollercoaster that sometimes leaves us on the floor. You will be up. You will down. You will break someone at some point. Someone might leave you in pieces on the floor.

It will be a rush and a ramble to meet someone. Someone decent. Someone kind. Someone good. That’s how the culture will make you feel.

At points, the world will come at you from every angle and try to shake your shoulders like you are standing in the middle of a desperate post-apocalyptic war zone where you must get out there and find one of the last decent human beings alive. And fill out dating profiles. And go out to bars. And put yourself out there. And. Just. Find. That. One. 

I hope I will be able to tell you that the world will make it feel like the search is endless but forced treasure hunts might only ever lead her to spots with no gold. 

Sometimes gold is the kind of thing that tumbles into a room unexpectedly.

So don’t fear so much. Don’t worry so much, girl. Put down the map. Put down the compass. Get yourself a backpack and take yourself on a journey and make constant kinds of vows to your own self first. One day, someday, a person will arrive and they will quickly become your favorite novel. You’ll want to write your notes into all their pages. But for now, you have yourself an encyclopedia. Others might call that massive thing “your heart” but I’m just gonna call it an encyclopedia because it is miles and miles of things you don’t know yet. You don’t need to search. Stop looking around wildly. Just start reading. Knowing yourself will be the biggest gift you ever give to your own great love story.

I like to imagine I’ll get to say these things to you, but then I am forced realize that I probably won’t ever get to speak much at all. If your pretty head is anything like mine then you always, always be consumed with the anthems and the love songs and the poems that are writing themselves in your head. It’ll be me to face the mirror at the end of a longer day and ask myself the harder questions: “Did I show you love today? It doesn’t matter if I talked to you about love, but did you show you love? More than that, did I show you how to love?” Was it evident in my moves? In my actions? In the way I made eye contact with you?”

Because that’s what love comes down to. Not words, but actions. Not a constant debate of who to love and where to love and when to love. I don’t want to waste my time on things I already know the answers to: everyone. everywhere. always.

It will all come down to how. How I show up for you. How I show up for you and show you how to love.

So, for now, I just whisper things that sound poetic like prayers to me. Things like this: May love teach me everything it needs to be teach me so that I can show up and show you how.

May love be evident in all the things that I do. In the way I say hello to you. In the time and attention I give to you. In the things I push aside on my calendar because this… this… well, nothing beats this. And we will never have “this” back so I want to make sure we just stay soaking in it a little while longer.

May I know how to treat myself and others with respect. Because that is the core. That is the secret. That is the golden nugget:

May love be evident in the friendships I make. And the apologies I make. And the time I make. And the messes I make.

May the love in my own story never be tame, but wild and fierce. May it sometimes be unexplainable beyond just these words: This is my heart. And while it's an imperfect mess, it promises to never give less than every ounce of it to you, my dear. 

With love,

YOUR MOMMMMMM (Are the "your mom" jokes still going these days?)

Walking Away From 20

I turn 21 on Monday.

Always with birthdays, I always saddle this great pressure on my shoulders to share what the year has meant to me. To pluck out the pearls of agey wisdom.  Or tell you that the days were worth it. That I think the past 365 slivers of time were really, really wonderful.

And they have been. Of all the teachers in my life, the age of 20 might go down in history as one of the very best ones. She was hard on me. She was good to me. She definitely made sure my head kept spinning, and my feet kept moving, and my heart kept re-scripting its own beat because the slow, slow thud of a normal ticker could never match or mirror the quickened pace I felt all year as dream after dream came true.

20 was the year of leaping.

It was the year of learning that you cannot sit idly and wait for life to work itself out. When you’ve uncovered an issue, when you’ve found the dampened piece of the puzzle that no longer fits in the corner like it used to, you’ve got to cut something completely new out. Reshape it all, baby. You’ve got to point yourself in a new direction. You have to have the courage to go for something you said you always wanted. 

20 was a year of testing faith and finding surrender.

It was a year that would have never been steady without faith bigger than my own body that a God far bigger than this tiny world would show up and push me where I needed to be. It was a year of giving things up for Him. Of letting “self” fall into the background to embrace a new purpose and plan. His plan was greater than mine. His hope for my life was more brilliant than mine.

20 was a year of falling in love.

20 was a year of falling in love and falling into rhythm with my own calling. I learned that anything– a passion, a job, a dream, a vocation, a person– must be courted steadily. It must be tended to. It must be watered. It must be remembered. It will demand longer hours. It will cry to you late at night. It will push you, and make you cancel plans, and scream until it gets it’s way. But it will help you change the world. And it will instill you with a message that is far greater than yourself. 

20 was a year of struggles.

And learning not to just tell myself to “get over it”. If it were that easy, maybe we’d all do it. We’d have no issues. We’d have no internal struggles. We wouldn’t walk this line of good and evil every day. Babe, if you’ve got struggles then let’s start raging. Your tiny fingers were prepped and created for battle.

Struggles are going to make you a fighter. I’ve learned to kiss the dirty ground for struggles. They are going to make your story that much more resilient. You’re not going to survive them, you are going to absolutely obliterate them.

20 was a year of breaking off.

Little by little, breaking off all the parts of me that no longer fit or no longer could serve the world. It was the year of learning that life is too short to stand around and pray that maybe one day you’ll wake up and be the person you’ve always wanted to be. That has to start with you. And in you. And it has to start sooner, rather than later. 20 was chipping away at the exterior with a chisel and refocusing on the the things of the inner: faith. decency. dignity. humility. trust. passion. forgiveness.

20 was a year of learning that things break all the time. And you’ve got to be willing to take a break when your body is spent and your soul is tired and your eyes are glazed over from looking at a computer screen for too long. Breaking is necessary for the refueling of your spirit and centering once again so you can better serve the world. & be a bright light within it.

20 was a year of choices.

Listen, people. You get choices.

Every single day. You don’t get all the answers. But you will get those choices. Some mammoth and massive. Others tiny and seemingly minute. Each one matters though. Every single choice– every task that does or does not meet the to-do list– will ultimately stack up and answer one big question: whether you standing here– with gifted oxygen in your lungs– actually meant something.

Gosh, 20- thank you. The dancing was good. The laughter was thick.

21 will be a year of celebration.

A year of dancing in the aftermath of what 20 gave to me. 21 will be a year of hustling harder than ever before but sucking in the joy deep, like a curly straw stuck in the thick of a cookies & cream milkshake. 21 will be a year of breaking the rules (or at least the rules I’ve still left intact). It will be a year of testing limits. And pushing forward. And seeing more miracles than ever before. 21 will be a year filled with the spirit of relentless and oozing with the potential of greater things yet to come.

21 will be a good, good year. Just you watch and see.

A Toast To The Ones That Fight For One Another. Over And Over Again.

So there's this article. And it went viral. The type of viral where you open up your Facebook and wonder if it's broken or having "technical difficulties" because this article is ALL. YOU. SEE. Post. After post. After post. You get the point.

 So, needless to say, you may have read it. You may have even posted it. It's titled 23 Things To Do Instead Of Getting Engaged Before You're 23.

The article just screams girl power, independence, freedom, and everything else enticing and dazzling that the world tells me I should want and have at this age. So to be quite honest with you, I read it and then felt guilty for wanting to get married someday. I bought into her theory (for a half second) that marriage is a cop-out. A settling. A safety blanket. A thing for the ones that want comfort.

So for awhile a minute I tried acting like I didn't want to get married. And put on a show (for me, myself, and I) like I wanted to be some big bad adventuring world traveler that "don't need no man". But that didn't last for long. It was only a moment later that I was day-dreaming about raising a family, waking up next to the love of my life each morning, and then getting out of our warm cozy bed to go raise a baby that poops on us and drools all day long.

Yes, I'm single. And I love it. I really do. Being single is fabulous. But the dream I've had since I was old enough to dream has been to one day settle down, be a wife, and raise a family. That's it. That's my dream. And I'm done feeling bad or guilty or weird for that being my dream.

Because you know what? I think it's a noble dream to dream.

And if you're anything like me, you're scared to death of vocalizing a dream like that because you think it will somehow "jinx" you and make you end up a lonely cat lady until the day you die. So you play reverse psychology with Cupid and say things like, "I don't wanna get married, anyways" because everyone you see that says that ends up walking down the aisle 2.5 seconds later.

 I'm not married. So I'm confident that I'm absolutely and positively 99% naive about all-things-marriage. So sue me if I'm wrong, but I think marriage is one of the most courageous things you could ever walk into. And one of the most difficult. It's not a dream for the faint of heart. It's not a dream for those seeking comfort. It will be one of the most uncomfortable, difficult, but most rewarding and beautiful things you could ever say yes to.

...

I've had to back out carefully from these boxes of what people think it means to be "single and somehow waiting" because they will suffocate me and I won't remember how to want you any longer. 

I'm caught in a world that tells me to never settle and then double backs to tell me that I shouldn't have too high of expectations. That people aren't perfect. And fairy tales aren't perfect. I know that.

Darling, I'm not looking for some Cinderella story. Jeepers, I will go barefoot if you wanna roll that way. I'm not looking for you to buy me roses every day. I am not going to chastise you for improper grammar (though words spelt out fully in text messages are SO much sexier). I haven't married you in my mind already (don't worry), simply because I don't even know yet if you like cookie dough ice cream and I think I would have to know that first. And let's just be honest, I would be content with a pixie stick and a ring made out of a straw wrapper if it meant we could focus on faithfulness instead of fluff. 

 Because the girl that wrote that article was right about a lot. She's right about the fact that marriage isn't what it used to be. That the divorce rates are out of this world. That selfishness has become a plague within our society that is literally suffocating and slaughtering marriages left and right. Because of all the fluff. Because of all the lies that Hollywood feeds us. Because of our inability to put others before ourselves. But I wanna be on the front lines of this fight- this fight to show the world what sacrificial love looks like, what it acts like, and what it talks like.

But my worry with this dream comes from living in a world where “goodbye” is rarely ever meant because technology has made it easier for us to hold on to old flames just a little longer. And we make movies out of unresolved love stories that leave other girls and guys standing like fools at the altars, left not chosen because their partner’s heart never found the endurance it would take to let an old love die. And so they stopped being honest. And they let it get too far. My worry comes from knowing we still get weak in the knees and we wonder “what if” because it excites us and it gives us adventure. But it breaks our hearts all over again. All at the same time.

Or, on the other hand, we live in a world where people give up too easily, say goodbye too quickly, and demand perfection too frequently. We live in a world that makes movies all about how magical and easy falling in love and staying in love is. When in reality, love is A FIGHT. A brutal one, at that. 

 

So trust me, I’m not asking for a fairy tale. I'm asking for you to fight.

Forget the pumpkin. Forget the dress. But I expect that both of us are going to show up to this thing like gladiators. With shields. And swords. And cool armor. And all the things it would take to fight for one another, over & over & over again.  You, my dear, are already my favorite thing to fight for. Did you know that? I don’t even need to know the color of your eyes or the quirk in your laugh to know I’m going to fight for you like crazy.

And every single day I grow stronger as a woman, and a leader, and future Someone to you someday but everyday until then I am reminded of just how fragile you already are to me.

And so I’d rather wait here, not giving trial runs and free subscriptions to my heart out up until the day you come around. I’d rather stay here and learn the crooks and corners of this heart of mine for myself before I ever think you could attempt to understand it too. I don’t need to know your every footstep. I don’t care all the places you’ve been. I just want a loyalty that this world won’t give us.

That’s worth waiting for. It’s worth sacrificing everything for it.

I might never get the rose from another guy for as long as it takes for you to get here. I. Don’t. Care. Because if and when I find you, that is it.

You get all my human affections. You get all of me. A deal is a deal is a deal. 

I’m yours.