You're 25

Life is mystifying to me; I find that the older I get I am on a perpetual precipice of holding more clarity in my hands and fighting off multi-colored cloudiness. Each day I wake up and find myself thinking "you're 25 - where ya gonna go, girl? Whatchya gonna do?"

I am 25 and in the middle of the country - I am continually trying to figure just where my heart lies - in the country or in the city? And just what does that day about me, hmmm? 

I stand before students with a desire to change a cycle that they're not even aware they are apart of yet and I'm asking them to attempt at definitions; are you city or country? Are you respectful or disrespectful? Will you be the change in the classroom that your teachers need you to be? And who am I even? Just where do I fit into all those requests. They know no more about how their hearts will come to define them than I do.

Control is something that has begun to wane more than wax lately - my need for it, my anxiety over it - which is remarkable. And horrifying. Without this need for control just where will my time be well spent? Perhaps in working on my very own defining.

I wake up each day and think a plethora of ideas and dreams and beg a multitude of questions, but it all seems to come down to this...

You're 25 and you live at home with mom and dad - it's not always ideal, but it is home. You still want your mom when you feel sick, you can't really cook all that well, but your baking skills aren't bad - perhaps this explains that self esteem issue you have. You believe in snail mail, you have a heart for The Lord and struggle with His timing and plans every single day. You live in the middle of nowhere and most of the time it's okay - except when you're filling your gas tank, again, for the third time in one week.

You're 25 and are still finding out what true friends look, smell, and feel like - your familiarity of the type of friend you are to others becomes clearer in each passing moment and yet you find yourself looking out the passenger side window of that blue car wondering if you'll ever really get it right anyway... And while you're looking out the window hoping with a desperation that smells of baby's breath and bacon you see an X in the sky. Family defines you - at 16, at 18, at 25.

You're 25 and relationships have fallen by the way side and flourished beautifully with a different counterpart. The scars of your attempts of regaining your footing are deep and winding and still you are left wanting. Wanting and praying and waiting.

You're 25 and your eyes are still that same fiery color they were when you were three and your hair still pains you the way it did back before death stained the pages of prayer journals and your talks with Jesus.

You're 25, standing before a tall pine tree that's always been called yours wondering what is to come and what will become and all the while you're missing people you never thought you'd have to miss in the first place, but then it starts to feel normal... But who really knows what normal feels like anyway.

You're 25. And in what will seem like a few short hours you will be 26.