twenty-one.

Monday, March 18, 2013

Right now I'm sitting in my bedroom and I feel really happy. I can smell my birthday cake baking in the kitchen, and I hear a bunch of beautiful little birds chirping outside my open window. It's a pretty day, one of those days when you just feel happy and peaceful. The kind of day that makes you want to go outside and sing. I may do that.

Right now I'll just stay in my bedroom and enjoy this perfect moment. This is a gorgeous day.

I wrote that in my journal six years ago, on my fifteenth birthday. I remember it vividly, how the warm scent of baking cake floated down the hallway to my room, the blue sky, the birds outside my window. I had probably either just finished school or had taken a break to write in my journal.

Because I wanted to capture that moment.

At first glance when reading the words I wrote that day, you probably wouldn't think there was anything off. That I was anything but a happy person celebrating my birthday. But the reason I sounded so happy, that I wanted to write down the simple loveliness of that day, was that at the time, good days were really rare for me.

I'm not trying to sound melodramatic, but it's true. The time that I wrote that entry was a very dark time for me. That birthday stood out so much because the rest of my days I spent feeling sorry for myself, feeling invisible, like I didn't matter. Like life didn't matter.

But.

Later that year, everything changed. The details are for another time, but suffice to know that if it weren't for God interfering in my life who knows where I would be now. And a year later to the day, I was able to write this entry in my journal:

March 18, 2014

Last year my birthday was very different for me. It wasn't filled with tragedy or anything. But I didn't have the Lord then, not really. I wasn't doing what I could to serve and please Him. I was angry with Him for not listening. I was depressed and thought nobody in the world loved me. I wanted out of life.

God has changed my life since then. So much has happened in the past year, good and bad. I've learned to appreciate the life I have and to trust Him in all things. I thank the Lord for the attitude I was able to carry into this new season of my life.

This past Monday I turned twenty-one. It's now been years since I felt the way I did when I wrote that first journal entry. I've struggled with plenty of other things since then, but never have I felt so hopeless and insignificant as I did in those days. My life completely turned around.

Every birthday I remember that day with its watered-down joy, and I'm so thankful that each birthday I've had since then has been full of real joy and peace. I think about that journal entry and I'm reminded how far I've come.

Twenty-one means a lot to me because it's a testament of how long it's been since my mindset was so dark. It says that I'm still here, I overcame, and I'm thankful. Monday I went to work, came home, spent time with my family. And not once did I feel that old hopelessness because it's in my past now.

I struggled with whether I wanted to post this, because never before have I told anybody about any of this and it's very personal. But I feel it's time to share it with you guys, because my goal with this blog is to reach someone out there who might need to hear the words I'm saying. To share the things that matter to me and let them become things that matter to others.

So for those of you who might be struggling-- don't give up. Trust God. Trust that you are worth something and that it will get better. It will get better, and someday you'll look back and realize just how far away the pain is. My prayers are with you.