Tomorrow I turn twenty. It feels like yesterday I was eight years old, sitting with my childhood best friend in her family’s Honda Odyssey, waiting for her mom in the parking lot of the grocery store. The whole fifteen-minute conversation we had while we were waiting was about how cool we’ll be when we turn ten: all the things we’ll do, what grade we’ll be in, how all the six and seven year olds will all look up to us — we might even have braces by then.
Over the years, the conversations shifted. It soon became all the ways life will change when we finally turn thirteen; all the places we’ll drive when once turn sixteen; then how we can get any piercing or tattoo we want as soon as we turn eighteen. Now twenty has descended upon me, as quick and silent as a passing breeze. (I couldn’t figure out a less dramatic way to express that.)
Every year, my entire life, I couldn’t WAIT until I turned the next age. Each number seemed older, wiser, and cooler than the last. But this year, I feel as if I’m putting my youth and childhood officially behind me. I will probably look back at this when I’m forty-five and laugh at how ‘old’ I felt when I was twenty.
Like every other human being in the world, my whole life has been like one big experiment. I’m always learning, always growing, always figuring things out, and I imagine it will be this way for the remainder of my life; but there are a few life lessons that have shaped who I am and how I see the world. Over the next few months, I’ll expand on each of these — but for now, here are twenty of the most important lessons I’ve learned, in all my twenty years of trial-and-error, that have carried me through life.
20 | Going beyond what is expected of you will go a long way.
19 | Negativity is never attractive.
18 | It’s okay to say no - it’s also okay to say yes.
17 | It’s good to do things you don’t want to do.
16 | Freedom is on the other side of responsibility.
15 | Don’t seek to make friends, seek to be a friend.
14 | You become who you surround yourself with.
13 | Giving people worth is the most important way you can serve anyone.
12 | Sometimes listening is the most helpful thing you can do for someone — listen to understand, not to respond.
11 | The world actually wouldn’t be better if everyone was like you.
10 | It’s okay to not know.
9 | Don’t take yourself too seriously.
8 | You will never regret being generous and hospitable.
7 | Rejoice always — understand joy to be a state of being, not an emotion.
6 | Spread the Gospel through your actions — through your love, through your joy, through humility.
5 | Honesty will get you far.
4 | Give yourself grace.
3 | Give others grace.
2 | Life isn’t about ourselves.
1 | Our identity isn’t found within our political views, beliefs, career, likes, or dislikes; our identity is found in Christ, and Christ alone.
Have I mastered all of these? Absolutely not.
I’m still very much learning how to put these into practice; but I’m very grateful for all the wisdom I’ve gathered over the years from the many people who have poured into my life. I’m grateful for my parents, and their patience with me as I have learned these lessons; and I’m grateful for my family and friends, who have molded me into who I am today with their love and support, and who I know will continue to do so.
In Christ’s Love,
Olivia
The Tapestry
Unknown Author
My Life is but a weaving
Between my Lord and me;
I cannot choose the colors
He worketh steadily.
Oft times He weave to sorrow
And I, in foolish pride,
Forget He sees the upper,
and I the underside.
Not til the loom is silent
And the shuttles cease to fly,
Shall God unroll the canvas
And explain the reason why.
The dark threads are as needful
In the Weaver’s skillful hand,
As the threads of gold and silver
In the pattern He has planned.
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