Have you ever heard of those "letters to my younger self" things? It's often a step in therapy to help people come to terms with self dislike and shame, to embrace the younger self and to acknowledge their own responsibility for mis-steps so that they can move past them.
I've never written a letter to my younger self. Seeing as how there's a constant train of thought barreling through my head, I don't have time to write a letter to myself much less read it. Probably couldn't concentrate over all the noise.
What I think about the mis-steps of my younger self is this-it is what it is. One of my absolute favorite attributes of God is that you can't knock him off his game. When we weave left, He does too. When we bob right, there He is to bounce us back to center. He is beyond our imagination. He can take dutiful obedience and shower down blessing after blessing in return. But He can also take foolish selfishness and somehow knit it into our lives so that we not only survive, we thrive because of the mis-steps.
It is the very definition of redemption. Cash in your hot mess for a beautiful life.
Yeah, my younger self got married and had babies too young, she didn't have a clue how to handle her money, she didn't even attempt to purposefully manage her life, she ate too much, she didn't get an education, she didn't believe in herself and leaned too heavily on other people's guidance. She was that hot mess in need of redemption. She wasn't lost in the sense of salvation; she just hadn't found herself and was looking under all the wrong rocks. Actually, she pretty much sat on the rocks and didn't even try to look.
I love remembering my younger self...financially strapped and overweight and always anxious about tomorrow. Because now, from this vantage point, I have pulled back the frame and see not just younger Sara but God over her smiling and saying, "Whatever." No problem, I'll just tweak this, arrange that, put up this roadblock, open that door. He used my weaknesses to get in my own way of preventing His perfect plan for me.
When I was a little girl, there was a song, Something Beautiful. It's a song not about what could happen, but what does happen.
I don't need to write a letter to my younger self, He made something beautiful out of my life.
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