an obligatory birthday post

“Holy Ghost scared the fear out of me”

So this is what it is.

I’m set to turn twenty six in a little more than a week, and I have thoughts about my life. I have more questions than answers. More hope, more dreams, and an increasing number of concerns. And this is how that goes, aging. Or at least so I’m told. The older you get, the less you know. The hurrier you go, the behinder you get.

I’m finding these sentiments to be true.

Standing at the sink, I hear a good and hard cough. Looking up, I see my dog and she has eaten her food too quickly. Just so excited to eat, so excited to fatten, to the point of losing air. Seeing she’s survived and cleared her throat of sustenance, I turn to butter a piece of toast. Load it with butter. Looking for the fatness, the richness unsparingly, I remember I have done this too.

There was a point when I moved into my house that I would leave the door unlocked for reasons I cannot currently recall. Something about an errand being so short, that it couldn’t possibly matter. That was very trusting of me, I thought to myself driving home from grocery shopping this morning.

I had a strange desire to walk around my neighborhood and try door handles, just to see if anyone else was trusting. More than that, I wanted to stick around inside for a little and be a fly on the wall. Wanted to see if they could show me how to live a life well.

At nearly twenty-six, I’m not sure I know how to live, or maybe that I do and I’m just not doing it. I haven’t decided which one is worse. I thought recently, how I’d be very annoyed to die right now. This was telling.

In my mind are fragments of ways I’d like to live, that I don’t exercise enough discipline to execute. I want to read more in a day. Write more. Move more. Get involved in a charity or serve. Actually record my podcast. Go on side quests. Travel. Do things for doing things sake. And I live in the container filled with “wants and needs,” but never giving them a runway.

I think I am also done tirelessly forming opinions. Being almost twenty six, means I am also almost thirty. Which also means that I am almost forty, fifty, even. Which also means that I am always, always closer to the day God beckons my soul from my body.

As someone who is one day closer to that, I am realizing day by day the frivolity of needing to have an opinion about everything. “I don’t know,” or “I haven’t thought about that enough yet to have an opinion” can do a wonderful service. In a week or so, maybe you’ll ask me what I’ll think and I will shrug my shoulders.

Also, I’m tired of being a parrot. I was explaining some concept recently ands realized I explained it with the exact opinion and almost the same cadence as the TikTok from which I got it. I did not like that. There are more thorough ways to learn and explain, surely.

I’m also done trying to be “disgustingly educated.” For me, it made me pretentious. I gaslit myself into thinking much of my curiosity was stemmed in honesty.

In some ways it was and is, but when I catch myself forcing my mind to meld with an ideology or concept just because I THINK I should know about it and that it might make me seem a little lot smarter soon, I realized this too is a worthless pursuit in my days.

I plan to continue being into what I’m into because I’m into it. The opposite of this is something I thought was juvenile or teenage. But I realized the desire to appear as something doesn’t leave. But the ability to deny it is to be apprehended.

Did I mention that I am also very into fat this year? And I think that will continue. I hope that will continue. Buying french butter with sea salt chunks from Whole Foods almost makes me tremble with delight. Choosing bacon over turkey bacon sometimes, and drinking whole milk, because why not.

For someone who wants such a rich and buttery life, I figured my nutrition might match it. Aging for me looks like skipping a Diet Coke sometimes and reaching full grasp for my husband’s cane sugared Mexican Coke. Give me the real stuff.

I suppose that what I want out of twenty-six is to feel like a real person, all of the time. I think that worry has been a great hinderance this year. In all of her forms. Jesus has confronted that in me. Told me that I am to be worry free. To cast my cares on Him because He cares for me. That I can be fearless because I’m perfected in His love.

Rolling around in this truth means that I can wake up, feet hitting shuffling across the rug and feeling the textures of life rustling beneath my feet. To take the little control that I am given and exercise it. So help me God.

This longing for life is what most of my days are marked by, and I believe I owe myself some changes.

To the wants and needs, and biting into them with real teeth.

With love,

Rebecca