What I would tell my 14-year-old self
That life is black and white and grey and wild with color.
Most of your life you will spend wondering how so many things can be true at once? That the sun can rise and the birds can sing, while some people are waking up in a honeymoon and others in grief. That to coexist actually means love and grace coexisting with judgement and justice. Sometimes judgement is soft with mercy. Sometimes love is hard with justice.
That small things like clothing styles and choices are Mr. Everest, and tiny blocks of wood that people discard of no important at all. That these are both true.
That you will be anguished and darkened. But that sometime the sun will rise and shine on your pain and you won’t know what to do with it. Sometimes sunlight is more harsh, sometimes night time.
Sometimes it takes more courage to walk into the light than to stay in the darkness.
That peace and anger can mingle in one day.
That half the things you believe won’t turn out to be true, and even less than half will. The things that turn out to be truth will be among the smallest and largest things you will learn.
True beauty will be found in character, heart and how you look. Because how you look is how you see the world, and then how the world sees you.
The little things are the big things. Washing your face doesn’t sound like it counts for much, but it adds up to a lifetime of value and care.
Listen to your gut. Your raw instincts. They are like a sonar device to give you readings on your surroundings.
Just when you’ve proved your position some wind will flap it about and prove that you didn’t have all the facts, and even sometimes, you will be absolutely wrong. This is a good thing. People who are always right are likely hiding something.
That in the end if you have submitted to this breaking the most beautiful thing will happen to you. Because you will learn that God is the only truth and he is the only unchanging faithfulness that is also limitless.
We can either anchor to that, or spend our lives bobbing about wondering why life and religion and relationships and churches and systems and government and clothes and ideologies and our selves always let us down in the end.
Because God is truth, and if he be in someone or something, they work. If he is not, no matter how magnificent the program, agenda, or system, they are once again a skeleton, bones. God is the only one who will fill you. He is the absolute truth that fills all else with meaning and purpose and love.
Relax, darling. This truth lives apart from you and in you. It doesn’t need you, it wants you. It made a world wonderful, and you fearfully made from this love. However much it has been twisted, it can still be found for those who seek.
Notice the sunshine and leaves playing together on nearby walls and overhead. See the cotton candy clouds in the morning. Watch the sun rise and set on the earth and in people’s eyes, and see how industriously the ants work. If we let them, the little things always point us beyond to the Great Truth and Love of the Ages. No effort is required of us to make this happen except to open our eyes. And?
Choose. Your choices will either build to evil, or to good. But if you seek for God, all these things will be added unto you.
Love and Truth,
L. Raine
Photo by: Photo by Tatiana Gonzales
