Letter to my Younger Self

Have you seen the movie 13 Going on 30? Jennifer Garner plays such a fun role in this movie, where her 13 year old self wishes to be "thirty flirty and thriving" on her 13th birthday and wakes up the next day as a 30 year old.  I joked about my pandemic 30th birthday this year being my 13 going on 30th birthday as I spent much of the day doing things I would have loved as a child; we went to Chick-fil-A (where Scott ordered a 30 count nugget tray, appropriate for a 30th birthday) and drove to my favorite coffee shop in town, Lucabe, to get coffee from Sprinkles the unicorn with curbside service.

I was thinking about how much my life at 30 is different from what my 13 year old self would have thought it would be like.  I think 13 year old Cristina who was playing trumpet in band with turquoise braces on and wondering if there was such a thing as happily ever after would be surprised at some of the things I could tell her about her life in 17 years.

If I could tell her about what's ahead, I think this is what I would say.

Dear Younger Me,

Hello, dear girl.  I hope this letter finds you well.  I'm sure right now you are getting up and trying to figure out which jeans to wear today with your blue Etnies.  A few years from now, you'll write off jeans for many years of your life, subjecting yourself to black leggings and flowy tops to hide the curves that you'll develop and hang onto until you get married (the years between college graduation and your 2014 wedding, you will lose these curves for a while due to healthy eating, meal planning, and running. They'll come back a few years later despite your best attempts, so enjoy those few golden years without them).  I know leggings aren't really cool now-- they bring to mind ideas of purple Spandex and Richard Simmons videos, but one day soon, girls will live in leggings and yoga pants (and no, you don't have to do yoga to wear the pants. This will all make sense soon).  There will be an ongoing debate over whether leggings are pants, and you will be in the camp of "of course they are" for life. As you get closer to 25, you'll become a bit more modest and realize that you should definitely wear shirts long enough to cover the back, but it will take longer than it should for you to come to that conclusion.

I know you have band later today, and it's been really hard to play your trumpet ever since you got your braces.  You're tired of putting gobs of wax on to keep your lips from getting torn up, and the sound just isn't the same as it was before you got braces. Believe it or not, as much as you love this instrument, you will walk away from it next year.  You will have some trials your freshman year of high school.  You will not be able to participate in band because of your decision to play volleyball.  During summer volleyball workouts, you quit because Coach K wouldn't let you stop to use your inhaler when running bleachers one day, and so you quit.  You'll quit a lot of other things in your life on the basis of principle.  You will continue to stand up for what you believe in and what you know is right and wrong, and you will quit a lot of other things because of that.  You aren't a quitter by any means, but you will walk away from things that aren't meant for you.

You'll try marching band for a week or two after that but are told that you cannot play the trumpet as there is no room for you in the lineup anymore, and you will be asked to play the triangle instead. So you will quit that, too, by writing a letter to Mr. Reid and sticking it under his door. The next day, you'll join chorus and will love the years that you spend singing in the Hoggard chorus. You dream of becoming a Voyager someday, but before you get the chance to try out, you'll leave Hoggard and go to boarding school. You won't be really sad about it because you never really felt like you belonged there anyways. Your worst fears were walking up to the Quad every morning and never knowing where you really belonged while groups of students were socializing in their cliques. Most days you and Rebecca will go hang out in Ms. Ducharme's room in the morning, because it's safe and she's just so kind. 

Boarding school? Did our family suddenly become rich and move to the Upper East Side? We did not. One day in homeroom, an announcement is made overheard regarding some sort of meeting that is happening in the library for the N.C. School of Science and Mathematics  One of your best friends at the time, Matt, gets up to go to the meeting, and assuming you should be going too, you follow him to the library. There, you'll learn about this specialized school for students specifically interested in the fields of science and mathematics where you can go to live at the age of 16. You'll hear things about living in dorms, getting your college tuition paid for upon graduation, and how the whole experience is free to you, paid for by state taxes. You'll go home and share with your family, who thinks it sounds ok.  You'll submit your application, thinking that you and Matt will go off to boarding school together, but then you'll later learn that Matt decided not to finish the application process.  

An acceptance letter will come, and your whole family will pile in the car to go visit the school with you, your first time on campus.  You decide to try it out; their mascot is a unicorn which seems funny and weird, but it can't be all that weird, right? You'll move in that August to 2nd Bryan, where you'll meet some of your very best friends and finally feel like you belong somewhere. As your mom and sister leave, you sob; so do they.  This is the first time you will feel homesick in your life, but certainly not the last (later in life you will live in Indiana for 7 years and you will oscillate between feeling at home and missing your home all the time).  

I left out some important parts that we should circle back to.  At the age of 13, where you are now, you already know that you have two best friends: Hannah and Alex.  Hannah sat next to you on the first day of 6th grade due to alphabetical seating, and you asked her, "Are you related to Colby Scearce?" She said no, and somehow that was the start of a beautiful friendship. She taught you about Jesus and having a relationship with him, and at Quest Camp 2 years ago you accepted Jesus as your savior and began your journey of getting to know Him and living for Him. You'll struggle a lot on this journey but will continue to grow in your faith through trials. 

Back to Alex-- Alex has been your friend since you moved to Wilmington.  Her mom and Mom were fast friends, and you can't really remember life without Alex anymore.  You were in Girl Scouts for many years together and went to summer camp and just did weird but memorable things. You're lucky to still have these two dear friends in your life at 30, so don't worry about the years where you are far from home and don't see them much. iPhones are coming, and FaceTime, and Skype, and these words mean nothing to you now, but they will help you stay connected when you are far from home.

Another important detail we should discuss is the events that happen in the summer of 2006, right before you left for NCSSM. In April, you meet a boy in your math class. He is a senior. He is funny and cute, and he loves Jesus. He tells you that you have "very user friendly work" when you demonstrate math problems on the white board. He requests to move seats to be closer to the air conditioner where you sit. He then invites the entire class over for a study party at his house. You are the only one who shows up; you were just wearing your normal clothes which he and his dad perceived as you "dressing up." You solved the math problems and left. His dad told him that you seemed like you liked him. Did you? I think you were unaware at this point.

Fast forward a little bit. You start hanging out a lot. You run over his foot in the Arby's parking lot with Caroline, your first car- a blue beetle bug. You meet his church friends. His best friend dates your best friend. He tells Mrs. Holliday that he doesn't have time for a girlfriend, he needs to get into dental school. Then one night, on June 16th, he says, "I know its kind of late, but will you be my girlfriend?" And so it begins. You will hardly ever live in the same town again until you get engaged in 2013. 

Oh yes, he is your husband now. It takes a long time. You are young, he is young. He wants to be a dentist, you... aren't sure what you want to be. I know at 13, you think it's a pediatrician, but at 30, you're now a geriatric nurse practitioner-- funny, isn't it? In your first year of marriage, you will have a lot of trials. You will cry a lot because Grandma passes away from cancer shortly after your wedding, and there are hard things that happen for Scott that you will both want to forget. It will make you love him more, but it will be really hard. You will skip that "honeymoon phase" and hope it will come years later. 

You'll get married at Mama C's house in Rose Hill, under the beautiful oak trees with all of your friends and family surrounding you. You guys now have friends in Indiana who are willing to make the 13 hour drive for your wedding, and that's really special to you both. Grandma won't be there, nor will Grandpa.  The week of your wedding is the last time Grandma is able to get out of bed on her own.  She will later see the video because you hired a videographer last minute for her to be able to see everything.  

And you and Scott will start a life together in Indiana; you'll have such terrible and happy memories of those early years. Life in your little 600 sq. ft apartment seems difficult-- one day you'll look back and realize it was all much simpler than you thought.  You'll buy a little house in southern Broad Ripple that needs so much work; you lovingly refer to it as the Davis Duover. You'll start NP school while still working full time as a nurse; Scott will get a job in Columbus as a dentist and you will move there into a home and neighborhood that you will never want to leave.  There's a lake down the street and you'll learn that lakes can be as calming as the ocean-- it's just something about water.  

You and Scott will continue to lose grandmothers. We already mentioned Grandma who passes away in June 2014. You will spend a lot of time with her once you graduate college, and just when the two of you are talking about taking a trip to Europe together (Grandpa hates Europe and will not go with her), you learn that her breast cancer is back and she has made a brave decision not to treat it this time. Mom essentially moves to Florida to care for her in her last few months of life after your wedding; life for her is never really the same after Grandma passes away. It leaves a big hole in her life even now. 

Grandma Davis passes away in February 2017, and Scott is unable to attend the funeral service because of his boards that are scheduled for that weekend. You attend as you are in town for Bec's wedding, and you are able to stand alongside the people who have become family as you say a final farewell to such a loving, kind woman who left her legacy of peach cobbler to her grandkids.  You'll have such special memories of baking the peach cobbler in Myrtle Beach as she instructs you on what to add next; she's a lot like you, in that she cooks and bakes by taste and smell moreso than by recipes, so that will bring a special challenge to recreating her cobbler.  

Mama C passes away in August of 2019; she was healthy as a horse until the last few months of her life where she bounced between hospitals and nursing homes and home.  You and Scott travel for her funeral and walk under the oak trees at her house after the funeral where all of her grandchildren and great grandchildren gather in her home to say farewell. You'll miss this house so much-- it has so many memories and just a sense of calm that you won't ever find anywhere else in this world, at least not at the age of 30.  

You'll also have a niece and nephew who are just the sweetest by the time you are 30-- Ashley has two beautiful babies who you and Scott love to death and long to be closer to. You won't have children of your own at 30, but you hope that parenthood isn't too far off for you and Scott at this point.  Your nephew, Easton, has your love for reading books and this is beyond your wildest dreams come true! Audrey is a chubby sweet thing with a smile like Mama C's; when she smiles, her whole face lights up and she has a gentle spirit, just like Mama C.

Your sister, Adriana, is a teacher now and is engaged! And she is engaged to Corey, set to be married in October of 2020. Oh yes-- the year you turn 30, there is a pandemic with a virus called COVID-19. It turns everything upside down for everyone, including your sweet sister with her upcoming wedding. At the time of this letter, the wedding is still on, but there are so many questions for everyone about what normal life looks like at this point.  We are all wearing masks wherever we go and there's this new term, "social distancing" that we are all learning to understand. We spend a lot of time in our homes and not a lot of time with other people.

Your brother, Christian, is now a CPA living in Charlotte, NC. His girlfriend, Carly, recently moved there as well, and she seems like she has just become part of the family as well.  Christian works long hours but seems to be happy to be in NC; he lived in Atlanta for a while and I think felt the weight of being far from home in a city where you don't know many people.  

Mom is working for a doctor still doing medical transcription; she loves the beach as much as she ever has.  She has two dogs and has a new place that she rents in town that is decorated just like a beach spot.  Dad lives in Wilmington still, too, and has become very healthy and spends a lot of time cooking and exercising.  They both visit you in Indiana a few times and really get a chance to see what you love about the Midwest.  

There's a lot to look forward to ahead and a lot that will break your heart; that's just life, I suppose.  Your life will be nothing like you imagined it would be-- it will be even better. The most important things I could impress upon you at this age are to spend as much time with family as you can and love them well, and spend time every morning with God, praying and thanking Him for all of the difficult and wonderful things that He has brought to your life.  

Love,
C