I have lived nineteen full years. I have tasted life but it
has not been as sweet as I expected. When you are a child, you see your parents
drinking coffee and enjoying it. You ask for some – imagining how good it must
be. They deny you – insisting you won’t like it. Now thwarted, you are
convinced this elixir must be heavenly and that is why they are selfishly
keeping it to themselves. You plead with them for just a taste. “Fine,” they
say and carefully hand you the mug. Anticipation building, you raise the mug to
your lips and a fully-grown scent reaches your nose. You drink – eagerly
expecting joy and love in a cup. You burn your tongue. Your nose crinkles at
the bitterness and it leaves a taste in your mouth not wholly unlike sidewalk
chalk. You push the mug back into the hands of your parents with disgust
heavily brewed on your face. They laugh and say, “We told you that you wouldn’t
like it.”
This
is not very different from how I feel about life so far. Except, they don’t
warn you that you won’t like it – instead, they lie to you and tell you that it
will be wonderful. And, unlike a cup of coffee, you can’t hand life back to the
One who gave it to you and say, “No, thanks.” No, you must keep drinking that
bitter stuff and do your best to acquire a taste for it.
Don’t
get me wrong – I have no regrets. I don’t believe in regret, actually. As soon
as you start regretting something, you are saying that God can’t use that for
your good and His glory – both of which, by the way, are intertwined. Yes, I
made mistakes – lots of them. But guess what. I learned that God loves
people who make mistakes. The wrongs I have done now enable me to look across
the table and make heart felt eye contact with other mistake-makers. Another
thing – I’m not afraid of Hell anymore because I’ve been there and as I lay
dying there, my Savior came into Hell to rescue me. I no longer fear it
because Jesus conquered it while holding me in His arms.
I
won’t even try to pretend that my hard times are over or that I’ve paid my
dues. No. I’ve also learned that everything that comes your way is a building
block – a platform – a preparation for what is to come.
Headed
into my twenties, I first want to thank God for everything that’s happened in
the first nineteen years of life – the good, the bad, and the ugly. It has all
formed me into the person I am – daughter of God and bride of Christ. It’s also
given me a sure foundation upon which to stand. Like I said, no guilt in life
and no fear in death. But I think I’d like to walk a little differently. I’ll
always love love and life and happiness so I’ll always be on the lookout for
those things. But I’d like to seek lessons instead of instant rewards. I’d like
to learn to be the best doorkeeper. I’d like to learn to share without expecting
repayment. I’d like to learn to exist on my own and not be afraid of that.
And
I write this to you as I drink a cup of coffee – cut in half with milk and
sugar. I’m not resigning myself to the bitter taste but I am learning how to be
able to enjoy it.
