Dear Me at Almost 16

First of all, I searched everywhere, scoured the whole house in fact, looking for an in focus picture of myself at age 15 or 16, and this is all I could come up with!  I am certain my mother must have some in focus pictures of me as a teenager, but apparently I do not.  

I was greatly inspired by the idea of writing a letter to my teenage self from reading posts at Chatting at the Sky.  Letters from women my age writing to their former teenage selves have popped up all over my blog reading world this week:  here and here and other places too, that I cannot quite think of this very minute.  The idea caused me to pause, and think, and then I decided that it would be a good way to mark my thirty fifth year, twenty years past fifteen by writing just such a letter.  I remember being fifteen and not even being able to imagine being twenty five, let alone thirty five years old.  

Dear Me at 15.75:

In a year or so there is going to be a hailstorm right after graduation, and while everyone else is in town celebrating at open houses for the graduates, you will be home on the farm having arrived back at the house early.  Even though your mother’s car is parked outside next to the machine shed, you should NOT try to drive it in when the hail starts to fall because you will feel rushed, and hurried and without even realizing it you will scrape the side of the car on the side of the extra large garage door.  This will make a large, long dent on the side of the car, and when your parents find it the next morning after church, they are not going to be happy.  Even though you didn’t even know it was there, they are going to be VERY upset.  They will not believe your good intentions about protecting the car from the hail.  Ever.

I’m so glad now that you spent all the time with your grandparents that you could.  They are such special people, and you will have such great memories of them for forever.

You might want to reconsider cutting your hair so short.  It is going to take a long, painful time to grow it all out one length, which is really so very much more economical since you won’t have to keep going back to have it cut all the time, and we both know that you really don’t enjoy having to make small talk with the person cutting your hair.

Although you might feel shy a lot of the time, you are so courageous in wanting to be a unique individual.  You like what you like and you stand up for what you think.  It is perfectly OK to not do things just because other people are doing them.  You will not really miss going to the prom like people think you will.  It’s OK to not want to cruise around in a car on the weekends.  Really, the book you are reading IS more entertaining.

Beautiful, popular people have their problems too, even though you might not notice that right now.  Try not to judge.  They are just regular old people deep down inside.

Be even kinder to the people who others are not being kind to.

Please try to be a little less grumpy with your teachers in high school.  They have a job that is even tougher than you think.  In a few years you will understand this very deeply.  Also, it is OK to become a teacher even though people tell you that smart people should do something a little more worthwhile.  It turns out that teaching is the PERFECT job for you.  You will be intensely passionate about it for years.

Be very careful not to drive your car through gravel backroads that are underwater in the middle of the night when you are sleepily driving back from babysitting. If you get stuck, farmers will have to use their tractors to pull your car out and you will feel very embarrassed.

For the rest of your life, you will appreciate all those public speaking skills you are learning on the speech team.

Go ahead and turn up the volume on the classical music.  Your parents only have a few more years with you under the roof, and a bit of musical appreciation is good for them.

Your senior year of high school will be rather miserable.  Hang on.  Things get a lot better.

Making all those cookies in the summer that you took to the field for lunches will turn you into a good baker.  You might consider trying to learn to cook some real food too.

You are going to LOVE college!   It’s not the disaster you are expecting at all.  Everything is different there.  The social structure completely changes.  You will have amazing and inspiring teachers who are a new breed of strange.  You won’t forget them ever.  You will choose some of the most amazing, reliable people as friends whose friendships will remain loyal for years on end.  Some of the deepest experiences of your life will take place there, and they will be infused with times of serious fun.

All that babysitting you are doing is the perfect preparation for the many years of motherhood you will face in the future.  Kids are great.

Treasure up all those evenings when you could go for a bike ride or rollerblade on the completely deserted highway.  Swallow a few bugs and enjoy the amazing place you were blessed with growing up.  You will never again live in a place so sparsely populated, even though you don’t believe this now.  You will actually learn to drive in traffic, and someday you will have to constantly consult a map to figure out where you are going.  Even though you love your home, you will discover that other places can feel like home too, and you will be blessed beyond expectation at all the friends you meet along the way.

You feel very badly all the time about the way that you look.  You are cut to the core by the mean things boys say about you and how you look.  You are traumatized by P.E.  and the nasty things that happen there when the teacher is not paying attention.  Mean things will happen in the halls at school, at church youth group, at music contests.  It will take a long time for those words to fade and those feelings to go away, but they will eventually.  Later you will have many people in your life who think like you do and you will realize people like your personality and appreciate you.

You will be horribly worried though the rest of high school and the first part of college because you have not had a boyfriend.  You will feel like you aren’t good enough for anyone to consider, and you just want someone to like you for who you are.  But guess what!  It turns out perfectly in the end!  You will meet the most amazing redhead in college and even though it takes a while for him to fall in love with you, even though you will be ready to give up, he does!  You get married and have beautiful children, and he’s the kindest, most caring person you would ever hope for:  he likes all the crazy parts of you and can handle all of your psychosis.  And he’s wicked smart.  Your marriage isn’t all roses and sunshine, but it’s good, very good.  Stable.  Steady, and great.  Not having a boyfriend in high school was really just God’s gift of protection from a lot of heartache, and you will be blessed immensely later.

Go ahead and be your crazy self.  Don’t worry so much about what other people are thinking. Don’t be afraid to look outside the box.  Love God always, because he’s bigger than any box people could contrive.