Dear Sixteen Year old.......

Me.   


In ten days, I will be sixty.  Although no other age has ever bothered me, this one is quite the different story.  My life has been flashing before my eyes an adventure and I'm so glad I didn't know on my sixteenth birthday what the next forty four years would hold!  Here are a few things I want to say to that girl!

Yes, you!  On the morning of your sixteenth birthday, you didn't feel all that carefree.  Oh, you were excited because this was the long awaited day you would get your driver's license!  But you were unsure of many things in your life and not sure you were ready to start into this new phase.  You were probably saying to the one behind the camera "Mooooother!  Could you hurry?"  You know..... that woman who later became your best friend?  Oh, and later in life, you will become so much like her, you'll be the one snapping pictures while people complain.  


You actually thought this particular day would never get here, but it did and you got your license and even drove to pick your grandma up for your birthday lunch......and got lost....... but never told anyone.  You will still be getting lost in your hometown when you're almost sixty!  Your sense of direction never gets any better I'm sorry to say.


You couldn't know that the boy you were desperately, madly, crazy in love with that day would dump you in the next year and that you would indeed live even though you swore you couldn't and wouldn't.  I wish this more mature version of you could have told you not to get all wrapped up in any guy, but to enjoy being young.....oh, you probably wouldn't have believed me!


You didn't know that day that half way into your seventeenth year you would be married and expecting your first son or that four years later you would have a miscarriage and that three years after that you would have another son.  Or the great joy and piercing pain you would have during those  years.


You didn't know that after fifteen years of marriage you would be divorced and then remarried to the same husband less than two years later only to be divorced again almost four years later.  Yes, dear, it's better that you didn't know all that on your sixteenth birthday.


You didn't know that you would love two sons so much and that you would watch their triumphs and trials.  That they would teach you to pray more than you ever thought you could, to trust even in the darkest hours that the One who loved them even more than you held their futures.


You sure didn't know that you would work in three very different occupations and that you would discover where you best fit in that work world.  You would actually work in a few more that were just jobs and you would learn where you didn't fit!


You didn't know that late one afternoon when you were already forty and thought love was a thing of the past, you would take a walk with a friend at the local walking track and meet a man who would become your third and final husband, your best friend and the love of your life.   You surely didn't know that you would help raise two more sons with him.  Or that those sons would also crawl into your heart and you would love them like your first two.  This older version of you is pretty sure that being able to truly love those two bonus children was a trait you inherited from your own grandmother.


You won't give birth to any daughters, but you will be gifted with daughters through marriage and they will bring you much joy!


That day, when you were sixteen and felt invincible and that death was something other people experienced, you could not know that in the years ahead you would lose people you love.  That dear friends and family would get terribly sick and die.  Oh, yes, it's good that you didn't know that then.


You didn't have a clue, no not one clue, how much you would love your grandchildren.  Yes, you heard that right, grandchildren.  Oh, I know it seems impossible to think of grandchildren on the day you become sixteen. You just didn't know what it would be like the first time you took your oldest grandchild into your arms and looked into her face.  Sigh....and that each one that was born would again spark that love that is like no other.


You had no earthly idea that you would cry a river or laugh until your sides hurt.  It's a good thing you didn't know that you would sometimes even laugh to keep from crying.  


You had no idea that you would watch so much joy and tragedy within your family and that with every one your heart would change a just a little.  No, don't worry, I don't mean harden just change.


On that day you couldn't have looked in that mirror and seen the day all your children would one day be  grown and living on their own.  


On that day, you couldn't look in that mirror and see the lines that would form on your face from so many things.....laughter, frowns, tears, smiles.....all would change your face from that of a teenager to a woman.  In fact, dear child, you would have never believed you would ever be so ancient or that when someone used that time tested phrase.....man, she looks like a fifty year old woman.......it would be a compliment!


Looking into that mirror, you didn't know that you would be storing all those memories so that at some date far in the future you would sit and ponder all the things that had happened in your life and you would wonder that you had even lived through some of them and then realize that those things, good and bad, were the things that would form you into the woman who would look into a different mirror and who would thank God that she had come to this place in life.  


So dear sixteen year old me, live, love, laugh and don't worry so much...... oh, you will worry, but you will also learn that you can live through most anything.


And will.