Twenty-five

Nope, I'm actually 26.5 but this article still applies.  You should read the whole thing here.  I felt very encouraged about where I am in life after reading this article.  And I have definitely needed some encouragement lately.

excerpt taken from “TWENTY-FIVE” BY SHAUNA NIEQUIST

"....Don’t be like that. Don’t get stuck. Move, travel, take a class, take a risk. Walk away, try something new. There is a season for wildness and a season for settledness, and this is neither. This season is about becoming. Don’t lose yourself at happy hour, but don’t lose yourself on the corporate ladder either.

Stop every once in a while and go out to coffee or climb in bed with your journal. Ask yourself some good questions like, Am I proud of the life I’m living? What have I tried this month? What have I learned about God this year? What parts of my childhood faith am I leaving behind, and what parts am I choosing to keep with me for this leg of the journey? Do the people I’m spending time with give me life, or make me feel small? Is there any brokenness in my life that’s keeping me from moving forward?

These years will pass much more quickly than you think they will. You will go to lots of weddings, and my advice, of course, is to dance your pants off at every single one. I hope you go to very few funerals. You’ll watch TV and run on the treadmill and go on dates, some of them great and some of them terrible. Time will pass, and all of a sudden, things will begin to feel a little more serious. You won’t be old, of course. But you will want to have some things figured out, and the most important things only get figured out if you dive into them now."

I think the biggest thing that sticks out to me is that it feels like it is the first time I've heard someone commend all different stages of life that happen in the 20's.  I don't have to feel bad about where I'm not if that's not where God has me.  And as cheesy as it sounds, I just feel free to be me.  Not someone measured against a time table of what my job should look like, what my relationship status should be, where I should be living, what I should be doing.  I don't realize how often I "should" all over myself and it's not a fun place to be.

I certainly don't have my life figured out and I don't need to.  But am I working in a job that I feel like matters?  Overall, yes.  If I take away what I perceive to be other people's judgments about where I work, I feel really good about where I am.  I don't have to prove I'm a risk-taker or that I'm growing or becoming a better version of myself.  I can just be.  Do I have good and loving relationships in my life?  Some of the best.  Am I a different person than I was 5 years ago, a year ago, or even 6 months ago?  Absolutely.  

I love it when I get punched in the face with perspective and you know it's one of those moments that fundamentally changes the way you think about things.  I feel like life is getting breathed back into me and it is such a welcome change.  (If you don't know some personal details of my life, that previous statement will sound a tad melodramatic.  It's not.  Or maybe it is but I don't really care. I never said I wasn't emotional.)