What I've Learned

So I feel that in the last few months I've learned lots, and it's all kind of come together in the last few days.  I mean, I've started to be able to synthesize them all and now I'm going to put them into words.

First, the most important thing I've learned is that I need to know what I want.  I need to be unafraid, bold enough to acknowledge what my heart is leaning towards.  I've been so afraid to say that I want certain things because I think that if I say them out loud, I am obligated to that statement for the rest of my life.  Here is an example from my childhood: When I was little I wanted to be a lot of things when I grew up.  A farmer, a ballerina, I wanted to live in China, serve in the military, everything.  And when I said those things out loud, my brothers decided to meld them all together and ask me how that would be at all possible.  A farmer in China who dances ballet and is in the Navy, or something like that.  They were ruthless, and they made me feel so stupid.  So since then I've just believed that you can only want one thing, or if you want more than one thing it has to all fit into one conceivable path so that all things fall together.  If you want to be a farmer, and you want to live in China, well then you clearly want to be a farmer in China.

Wtf?  That's bull.  I've now decided that it is perfectly fine for me to want things that don't align.  Really.  It is okay that I want different things and that right now I have no idea how they would all work out.  It doesn't matter.  I need to trust God, because He is the one who put these desires in my heart.  He put them there for a reason.  If they're meant to stick, they'll stick.  If they're meant to work out, they will.  But for now I don't need to worry about them all the time.  I need to focus on the here and now, because I may never have a future to live out all these wants of mine.  I must take the wants that I can have now, and have them!  I want to do this, I want to be that, well freaking do it Caroline!

Second thing I've learned... hm.  How do I put this?  I'm old.  But there's more.  I'm so young.  I guess I'm saying that I am happy with the age I'm at.  I'm happy for the twenty years I have under my belt; they were good years and I don't think I'd change a thing.  I'm excited about the future, though I cannot numerically quantify it.  I know it will be great, I just know it will.  It won't be easy, I know that for certain, but I am confident that the Lord has many great things in store for me.

I don't know if this suffices to show you all what my head has been bouncing around for the last week or two, but here it is.