Finding lovely in moments of life. As I move on to the next decade of my life, I want to reflect on the lovely moments in my twenties. The small details that are at times overlooked during a period of life when learning to be an adult is the hardest. Where the bigger picture in one’s head drowns out the smaller pictures making up the bigger one. This is what being twenty is about, finding lovely and looking for lovely in the smaller aspects of life.
I’ve made most of my twenties by working hard at my jobs and played a fair amount along the way. I ran half marathons, ran from God and then ran back to him and flung my arms around his neck saying please don’t let go. I have read countless books on many topics. I ate a lot, stopped eating, then started eating differently, and more healthy. Developed healthier relationships with God, my body, and friendships. I have traveled to places, dreamed and took scary steps to the next stage in life. I have had good days, ugly moments, ugly cried and laugh-cried my way through ten years. Days have been long, but these years were short and time was sweet summer nights on a front porch.
I have wrecked and renewed relationships. Loved my friends and failed them. Times I have asked myself where all my friends had gone and then learn to be a better friend. I have built friendships from the ground up and resurrected relationships after I set fire to them through careless actions. I have pushed my family away and then ran back to them to seek comfort and security I needed. I sought meaning, love, and value where there were not meant to be sought. I have been broken and emptied before I could slowly patch myself up and be filled again. I have questioned my motives and at times God. I have said goodbye to destructive relationships with people who were toxic. I have left a trail of broken and imperfect steps of my past behind me as I did so. I left an abusive relationship and became stronger in my single season of healing. I have poured myself into others lives as they have poured theirs lives into mine. I can never say I wouldn’t do anything differently but looking back I called it redeemed life.
I’ve changed for the better. In the ten years, I’ve worked hard, taken risks, changed jobs, and changed direction. Changed my philosophies and perspectives about what is life. I’ve been changed by my faith and my faith has changed me. I have left behind many of the misconceptions I once held to be true. I have dropped, picked up and then dropped again the baggage of my past I have collected. I have found new joy in same old things I have been doing for years. I have been stagnant, stretched and renewed. I have broken out of my introverted shell only to later retreat to long time comforts of being an introvert. I’ve held titles of a student, lab assistant, lab technician, research associate, friend, blogger, daughter, sister, girlfriend, learner, wander and beloved. I’ve evolved into a person my twenty-year-old self would not be able to recognize, but I think she would love a whole lot.
Looking back I have pictured myself as a twenty-year-old a career, marriage, and possibly a baby, but along the way, things changed. There are mere lovely details along the path to thirty that makes up for the disappointments of my twenty-year-old self. My twenties taught me anything it’s changed is slow and often imperceptible at the whole of a period. The tiny moments collected along the way propelling forward into bustling new life ahead. I see this as a view a small part of the larger picture of my life. I have found lovely in my twenties.
A Biotechie's Life 