Today is my birthday!!!

A lady never shares her age but I will admit I am older than other authors on this site. This is also the first birthday since I graduated with my B.S. in Communication.

It seems like most of my adult life has been spent either messing around in the “major of the month” club when I started college after high school or dreaming of going back and finishing school sometime before I collect social security.

Now being done with school I am not sure what to work toward anymore. What are those goals and dreams that I forgot about because I will never get done with school?

I have spent the last few months spreading my resume out to a bunch of places that I could be happy working for. None are my dream job. My age also makes me less of an attractive candidate. Most employers want to hire recent grads who are 22 or 23 years old not my age.

Getting discouraged over jobs and life made me think “This would have been so much easier to get through when I was 20, I wish I could go back and smack my 20-year-old self and tell her to get her act together.”

Fortunately, that can’t happen. There is a song by the Christian group, Mercy Me, it is called "Dear Younger Me." In this song, the singer struggles with similar thoughts.

“Dear younger me

I cannot decide

Do I give some speech about how to get the most out of your life

Or do I go deep And try to change

The choices that you'll make ‘cause they're choices that made me

Even though I love this crazy life Sometimes I wish it was a smoother ride

Dear younger me”

Near to the end of that verse, the line about ‘The choices that you’ll make are the choices that made me’. That spoke to me. Sure, I wish my life would have been easier with way less drama than it has had but every choice and experience made me into the person that I am today. As much as I would love to make life easier for younger me I wouldn’t trade the person I am now for anything. The one thing I do wish I could give to my younger self is some self-worth.

“If I knew then what I know now Condemnation would've had no power

My joy my pain would've never been my worth

If I knew then what I know now

Would've not been hard to figure out

What I would've changed if I had heard”

Situations and problems that seemed so all-encompassing when I was 19 or 20 are not even blips on my worry radar now. Like self-confidence, basically, I had none. I grew up reaching 6’1 by middle school and a girl who is that tall is not well received by a bunch of shorter girls and boys who have not experienced the joys of puberty yet. I wish that I could let that tall girl know that your height is not something to be ashamed about. Rock the height and as a college professor told me “What makes you different is what makes you memorable and memorable gets things accomplished”

“Every mountain every valley

Through each heartache, you will see

Every moment brings you closer

To who you were meant to be”

I am still working on the who I was meant to be part. But a birthday is a new start, another year given by God to accomplish awesome things. At the very least this year will be one heck of an adventure.