Human

When I was a little girl and we lived in the Pacific Northwest, my birthday always landed during the state fair. The fairgrounds, which were huge and magical and full of classic autumn nostalgia as the all-day crisp air and orange-tinted sunshine gently whipped the smell of farm animals and candy apples and the music from the carousel around my little body, were just down the street from our house. We’d always go, and it always felt like a built-in celebration, just for me.

The year I turned eight or nine, I desperately wanted a pet turtle. We’d moved away by then and didn’t live near the state fair anymore. When one of my school friends asked me what I wanted for my birthday, I told her I wanted a turtle, and she said she’d get one for me. When my party came, I opened her gift, and to my disappointment she did not get me a real turtle — but a turtle hand puppet instead (her mom wouldn’t let her get me a real one, which was good parenting). 

When I turned seventeen, I asked my parents for a turtle. When they gave me their gift, they gave me two options: a real turtle or the cash that would have paid for the turtle and all its supplies — I went with the cash.

(I finally have my own real turtle now — I got her on my own, no birthday required, and it’s been fun to have a childhood dream fulfilled).

Today, I turn twenty-seven. And oddly, these three memories of birthdays from my past feel extra poignant for me. They seem to carry with them a pure freedom and decisiveness that feels lacking in this stage of my life.

In the last few days leading up to my birthday, I realized I’ve never felt more aimless or lacked more vision than I do now walking into my twenty-seventh year. I feel stuck, and I’m not really sure about a lot of things.  

However, as life has happened and I’ve shown up to it, I’ve discovered over the last year that I finally have two strong legs beneath me, ones with knees that don’t buckle under the weight anymore. I know a strength and a security that once was so foreign but now feels like custom armor holding up my back. 

A once deep, crippling loneliness that lived in my bones is gone, and while I love it and take it when people see me and take time to know me, I don’t need them to anymore, because I know God a lot better than I once did and He has filled those holes for me. 

What a prize that is. That feels like a strange choice of words, but it really feels like a free prize I was given at the state fair — a special, treasured gift, just for me. 

And so even in the midst of crises, and more frustrating health issues, and outrageous stress, and feeling unsure about my life and future, I know a few things for certain because I’ve tried them and they’ve returned to me true:

• Jesus Christ is God and Lord of all the earth
• Jesus Christ lives in me, and Jesus tells the truth
• I can’t save myself, and this is good news
• Joy is secure, not fleeting
• The God of the Universe knows my innermost being, even the parts I can’t see
• My Father in Heaven is a God of order and wholeness, not chaos — and He never lies
• Love remains; Love stays

In a stage of life where it feels impossible to trust myself, to know the God-given desires of my heart, to see the path laid out before me, and to live in a semi-state of ambiguity because we just can’t see everything all at once and make sense of it — I’m trying not to get ahead of God in the work.

Someone told me the work starts closer, starts with practicing quiet again to re-learn what my voice sounds like, and the voice of God.

It feels hard to practice this right now, and the quiet feels too loud. But I’m pocketing the moments where the quiet comes easy, and it stays quiet — like when I go outside to watch my turtle just be a turtle, and I’m finding myself surprised to be filled with such enjoyment and delight at watching her be her.

Maybe doing so re-members me to a little girl who knew herself better than I do, one who carries the faint whiff of the state fair and turtle dreams.

Maybe year twenty-seven will be a year where I get to become more familiar with her again, with who God designed me to be, and the parts of myself that He takes delight in.

I wonder what she’ll be like. 

Soli Deo Gloria.