3 birthdays - a reflection

January, 2021

My 20th birthday didn’t go quite as I had planned.

I wasn’t video calling my family from some remote location as a full-time missionary. I wasn’t celebrating the fact that my teenage years were over. I wasn’t even hanging out with any of my friends. I was just sitting at a desk in my basement apartment, feeling lonely, and more than anything, guilty.

When I lived in Dallas, my sixteen-year-old self had had much higher expectations for where I would be at on my 20th birthday. I was falling short in practically every category: academically, I was taking a leave of absence from school since my first three semesters had yielded me a whopping 2.5 GPA and no more direction than I had had in the first place; musically, I hadn’t put out a single song for my music project, even though I so dearly wanted to have something to show for the ambitions I had articulated to people time and again; and perhaps worst of all, spiritually, I still wasn’t serving a full-time mission because I hadn’t gotten my act together enough to be allowed to do so.

It was my obligation to serve a mission. Where much was given, much was required, and I had been given so very much from God – a financially stable upbringing, a healthy body, a sharp mind, an ability to interact with people, and most of all – the restored gospel of Jesus Christ, yet, how disproportionately little good I had done for all the resources I was blessed with. In my mind, I wasn’t where I was supposed to be. Clearly, I off of the path of God’s plan for me, and every day I wasn’t submitting mission papers, I was taking a step further from that path.

At times that semester, I became quite bitter when my reaching out for God felt seemingly without reward or response, but something deep inside me kept me reaching. Eventually, that seemingly unrequited reaching led me to feel prompted to move from an unideal roommate situation to a bed across the hall that had recently opened up. Then, it led me to feel prompted to move again, this time not across the hall, but across the country to sell pest control with this new friend I had made.

It was an act of faith like few I had ever made to quit my job, pack the car full, and drive across the country, but amidst the discomfort, I felt alive. That summer changed my life. There, I found someone who understood my challenges, who made me feel heard and loved rather than guilty. I became less self-deprecating and more patient; less bitter and more soft-hearted. I had an experience that pushed me to my breaking point; inspiring me to reach out to a psychiatrist from whom I was prescribed medication for depression. I had friends I enjoyed spending time with, and I had even had a girlfriend.

It was as if I’d had my own exodus story in which God had shown me his goodness by leading me from darkness to a promised land. But then that promised land fell out from beneath my feet. My friends went their separate ways. My girlfriend and I broke up. Like my 20th birthday, I celebrated my 21st birthday, again, in an unfamiliar apartment in Provo. But this time, amidst my loneliness and unlike my 20th birthday, I felt supported, patient, and hopeful.

Yesterday, I turned 22. I can only wonder what my 16-year-old self would think about my life now. He’d probably be similarly disappointed, perhaps even more so. I’m still not on a mission, and I still don’t have nearly as much to show for my musical aspirations as I wish I did, but I feel less guilty about it now. I feel like God is proud of my “even imperfect efforts to do his work,” and I have faith that the day-by-day private victories I’ve made over the course of this last year will appear and are yet appearing in my public life.

I guess this is just what life is like. We all board a plane bound for Italy, a place we’ve never been but a place we’ve dreamt a whole lot about. But then the flight gets delayed. And then it ends up landing in Holland instead. We didn’t ask to go to Holland, but then again, we'd had a pretty vague concept of what Italy was going to be like in the first place. When we start to discover this new place where we’ve landed and consider the experiences that led us here, we find that, despite what our 16-year-old selves would say, we wouldn’t have it any other way.