too many thoughts from a sunset & a baby on the bus

I am twenty-two years old.

I don’t like to talk about how young I am because I like to think that I am much older. That I have done so much, seen so much, made it through so much that I’m really in my mid-thirties, which is probably where the largest percentages of my friends live, so I seem to fit in. But I am young, and no matter how much I like to think I’ve seen a lot, there’s so much I haven’t seen that my mid-thirties friends may or may not have, but they’ve at least got the birthday candles to back their years up.

Babies always remind me of mortality. I always forget that I was a baby once. It seems a long time ago. Like when you’ve lived in a place for a few months, and you feel like you’re getting your footing, and it’s like you never lived anywhere else in your whole life.

On the bus, an eleven-month old leaned up against his papa, giggly and slapping his hands against the bus window, the seat, his dad’s face.

Across the aisle sat a tall, thin man, blonde, and content nose-down in a book. He looked like what I imagine my friend Ben will look like in fifteen years. It’s strange to think that we will morph as we get older, not too different, but slightly aged by a few more years tacked to the bottoms of our feet.

I have no idea what I will look like when I am older, but I suppose I will look much like my mother, the same laugh lines and squinting grin, only with different years behind them.

I am twenty-two years old. I am barely older than half way to thirty (don’t question my math). Thirty is still eight years away. Eight years ago, I was fourteen. At fourteen, I never thought I’d see sixteen. At sixteen, eighteen seemed unreachable. At eighteen, I wondered if I would ever turn twenty. Twenty-one? I am twenty-two, and each year is a miracle.

I live in Seattle. The city. Nearly the most-north and most-west of the northwest of continental America. (I know I have friends in/from Alaska who would beg to differ, but hear me out.)

What could I do in these eight years?

I could write a book.

I could jump out of an airplane.

I could get a degree.

I could live in Europe.

I could see Paris.

I could get married.

I could have a baby.

I could get a motorcycle.

I could backpack across the United States.

I could live in a cabin.

I could chop my own firewood.

I could go sailing.

I could move to a new city.

I could learn French.

I could be a runner.

I could get a cat.

I could go to Asia.

I could work at the Post Office and hand-deliver the last of this millennia’s paper mail.

I could start a business.

I could read every book on my bookshelf.

I could climb a mountain.

I could throw away my smartphone.

I could learn to love.

I could have a garden.

I could knit a sweater.

I could write a song.

I could never see past twenty-two.

I live in Seattle. I am twenty-two years old. I chew on it like the lingering sting of a small burn. I guess I could do a lot of things, but I am so young and have already found a place that feels like home, always forgetting that it is “home…for now.”

I know that I have a lot of mistakes to make. I’d like to credit myself for all of the mistakes I’ve made thus far. I think I’ve done a good job of messing up. I must have done something right, though, because I am twenty-two, and I live in Seattle.

Yet I am realizing more and more that even through all of the screw-ups and the if-only-I-hadn’ts that God has redeemed every situation. I didn’t bring myself here through some elaborate plan of well-being. God dragged my heel-dragging, sorry, stubborn self to a place where he knew I could live better. While I go along blindly tossing breadcrumbs in front of me and following whichever ones the birds don’t eat, he’s already had the path in sight.

I’m glad somebody knows what I’m doing because I sure don’t.

It was a bit of a harsh reality: my first year of college when I realized that no one was actually there to learn how to do things (like get along in the world) but just to learn about things, which ultimately meant that every adult in the known world had just been faking it all this time, pretending to have it all in order.

I got a compliment at work for a deliverable that I entirely made up. I had no idea what I was doing, but I put something on paper, and my client loved it and wants more. The expectation is now set, but it’s like when you say something seemingly profound out loud to someone, but they ask you to repeat it, and you can’t. For a moment, I felt confident, then I remembered how little I know, how I guess my way through each day, and how the only thing I can be confident in is the Lord.

And that is so hard to say. So hard to believe. So hard to live out.

I told my manager about the compliment, and he was excited. I was scared that I might fail next time. I hid in a bathroom stall and chanted, “My only confidence is in the Lord.”

The Lord. It’s taken me a long time to come around to saying that. I’m still not comfortable with it, but I am beginning to see the truth in the title, the name. The Lord—because someone bigger has got to be in control because it’s certainly not me.

I have no idea where I will be in eight years, what my life will look like, if I’ll even see thirty. I’m just stumbling through Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday…a week-long battle and repeat.

Time’s not stopping or slowing down (obvious, I know), but I’m just jogging along, tripping, falling behind, sprinting ahead, catching up, losing my breath, finding it again and forgetting it’s there, forgetting that I have to blink and eat and sleep to keep going. Somehow I still do.

I think about numbers a lot. When I am stressed or overwhelmed, I find myself counting my steps. I have never started the tally at one, but I catch myself somewhere in the mid-thirties. I’ve counted as high as the seven hundreds before losing myself in the pacing of my steps. When I realize that I’m doing it, I can’t stop; the numbers become my rhythm.

When I feel okay or think all is well, I count the months, count the years, each one another tally on an abacus with uncountable beads.

I am twenty-two years old.