Reflection on a Birthday.

You could have found her yesterday sitting on the floor of an over-crowded storage closet underneath a back staircase at the end of a cluttered dormitory hall. She sat on the floor and her smile was cheesy as she listened to her family singing “Happy Birthday” to her over the phone. She had woken up to a room decked out by her roommates for this momentous day, a day on which she would turn twenty and cross forever the threshold from childhood to something hideously like adulthood.

Yesterday was the absolutely craziest, most insane birthday I have ever greeted yet. After a slow sort of dragging morning sitting around, watching the freshman come in and socializing with upperclassmen, my afternoon exploded with work. Almost a non-stop go-go-go from 2:00 until midnight. And yet, as tired and overwhelmed as I felt (with an incredible desire to stick my head in a hole in the ground somewhere and scream) it was an exhilaration in the end that overtook me. And my birthday simultaneously occurring with opening day of college was all it should have been. We didn’t find time for a Baskin Robbin’s ice-cream run, I was able to see my brother for a total of 57 seconds, and the misplacedness I felt in and among all the day’s activities would be hard to be expressed.

And yet, what real difference does all these mere circumstances make? The important thing is— I turned twenty years old yesterday. And I feel older. And I have a million plans and aspirations for this year. Mostly just a permeating, new, and fresh desire to be everything and all that God wants me to be. What that looks like? I know in part, and for the rest I can but wonder ecstatically.

I know it means being less selfish, more willing to give of myself to others— even at my own cost, at my own discomfort. I know it means receiving much much more wisdom from God, walking in the light of His word and making the right choices. I know it means pushing myself far beyond my comfort zone, and seeing what wonders God will work.
I know it means being a better friend.
I know it means being a better roommate.
I know it means being a better student.
A better this, a better that. Seeking betterment through a greater realization of my fragility and weakness so that I may claim His strength more and more.

20.
Really, people, I’m a 20 year-old SOPHOMORE in college and if that’s not old I don’t know what is— and I can already feel the greater responsibility, the greater call for maturity in my life.
Which is slightly crazy cause I can’t help but remember what a sinful mess of immaturity I am on my own.

I can’t get this verse out of my head these days;
Psalm 40:17 “But I am poor and needy; yet the Lord thinketh upon me.”