Dear Younger Me (You Are Not Replaceable)
Dear Younger Me,
You are not replaceable. Don’t let the fear of being replaced on the court, in your job, or in any situation ever make you feel like YOU are replaceable or unworthy. You have this underlying fear that if you don’t perform well, you’ll be benched or demoted. The truth is, it does happen. But those times don’t define who you are.
Because you are so much more than a performance. Remember that band competition in fifth grade and your first saxophone solo? Afterwards, you could only think of everything you did wrong, not everything you did correctly. And not just with that solo, because you do that with every sports game, too. I wish for you that you would have grace to see the good things, confidence to believe that you can do what you’re doing, and the utmost certainty that your value and worth go far beyond what you do.
Your performances do not make you who you are. Your mistakes don’t, either. Because you are a child of God, one of His chosen people and a part of His prized possession, as it says in 1 Peter. Even with all the mistakes and faults, Jesus wants you in His life. He doesn’t demote you or replace you in His life when you mess up. He’s got open arms for you!
Love,
Megan
Dear Younger Me,
When your heart is racing in the middle of the night, and you’re so unsure of how to handle what you’re worried about, remember the voice of God calmly saying, “Trust me.”
As you spin your head in circles, you forget that you have someone in your corner who knows exactly what’s up. He knows your story, He knows your next move, and He holds your heart, too. No one else knows you better, and He knows all the pages. Remember those choose-your-own-adventure books you used to read? You would get frustrated trying to choose the right pages to get the ending you wanted. Even now, you might know what you want and aren’t sure how to get there, but you really don’t know what adventures God has planned for you, either. You can’t fast forward to know the ending or skip ahead to read the pages you’re anxious to read, but you can trust that God knows.
Because if God gave you a remote to fast forward or He presented all the pages of your life for you to read, you’d not lean on Him. You wouldn’t learn to trust. So when your heart is racing as your mind is spinning and you’re trying to tackle all of your problems in your own hands at 11:30 p.m., remember the voice of God calmly saying, “Trust me.”
Love,
Megan
Dear Younger Me,
When the curveballs come, and you keep striking out, remember God makes everything beautiful in its time. You won’t always know what the curveball will turn into, but you can know that the situation is going to be used for good. It might take time to see what the “good” is, but you can trust that He will.
When the curveballs seem to come all at once and it seems like nothing is going right or how you planned, feeling defeat and discouragement is natural. It takes a little more of you to think that God has something to turn them into. But I’ve seen Him turn them into reasons for joy, reasons to trust Him, and reasons to see that I’m not in control. Sometimes those reasons showed up in hours, and sometimes those reasons showed up in months, but I encourage you to take the curveballs with grace, knowing there is a reason for them.
Remember Ecclesiastes 3:11, “Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end.” What a promise, and what a comfort. Though you don’t know what’s going on or how it will all stack up, trust that God knows exactly what He’s pitching to you and how the game is going to finish. He knows.
Love,
Megan
Dear Younger Me,
Be thankful for the still waters. When you’re in the season of raging seas, all you want is for things to settle down. However, the irony is that when things are normal, you long for change. But goodness gracious, let yourself rest. God has each season in your life placed as it should be for a reason. So when you exit the rapids, appreciate the time just to float. Instead of enjoying it, eventually you’ll long for what’s around the riverbend. When you forget about being Pocahontas for a second, and you remember that God “leads me beside quiet waters,” you can realize there is such peace and goodness you should enjoy right here.
You might complain that you “have nothing going on,” but if you look a little closer, you’ll see the “nothing going on” is really something. It’s resting. I think you’ve been so busy that you don’t understand how to do that.
Hold onto Psalm 23:2-3, which say, “He makes me lie down in green pastures, He leads me beside quiet waters, He refreshes my soul. He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake.” It feels pretty silly to long for what’s next when I’m reminded that peace is a good thing. By the peaceful waters, let Him refresh your soul. Let Him remind you He is enough. Let Him remind you that rest is what you need.
Love,
Megan
Dear Younger Me,
As much as you want life to be fair, being the “Fair” Queen isn’t fulfilling. Growing up, you always wanted things to be equal among you and your sisters, but that wasn’t always the case, instigating your jealousy and Mom’s common quote, “Well, life isn’t fair.”
Now that you’re older, you still feel those feelings, less so about the silly things of your childhood, but instead seeing everything around you that you don’t have yourself. You see friends in different life stages and want what they have, and you want to ask God if He’s holding you back, like a child repeating the same grade. It’s easy to think it’s not fair.
But even if you had all the things you want, I think you know deep down that you still wouldn’t be fulfilled. Happiness doesn’t come from life being fair. Happiness doesn’t come from having everything you want. No matter what you experience, your soul is going to long for what can’t be found in this world. Your soul is longing for the ultimate love and satisfaction that is met in Jesus. On this side of eternity, your heart is still human, and you struggle to fully grasp it, but knowing this, I hope you’ll have a better understanding of your feelings.
So in the wishing and longing for what others have, keep bringing your heart to Jesus. He knows how to take care of your heart and knows exactly what you need and when.
Love,
Megan
Dear Younger Me,
Believe God can use you even right now, because you are where you are for a reason. You’ll find yourself saying this quite a lot, that “it doesn’t matter how old you are or how young you are to make a difference.” It’s easy to say that about other people without believing it for yourself.
It’s easy to watch any movie or show about a hero or heroine, no matter their profession, and to envy their ability to make a difference that you forget you can make a difference right where you are, too. It might not be an operating room or solving a crime, but God can use you right where you are, doing what He asks you to do. Be the one who makes a difference by staying a little longer to help clean up after practice. Be the one who chooses to sit with the girl who’s all alone. Be the one who holds the door open with a smile. I think our world underestimates the kind of difference those actions can make.
And when you feel like you have nothing to offer, remember that God put Esther in the palace at just the right time to save her people, so He’s got you where you’re needed, too. Let Him take all the things you feel make you weak into His hands and let Him work. When you get frustrated trying to turn what you see as crumbs into cake all on your own, remember God is far better at that than you are. He put the ingredients of your life together, and He knows how they go together and who you can serve.
Love,
Megan
Dear Younger Me,
Keep showing up. When you’re struggling in your place of pain, keep showing up and holding on.
You know how you love the sports you play, but you don’t like running and the sprints in practice that went along with it? When you felt like you couldn’t catch your breath or your legs couldn’t go on or any faster, you considered walking out of the gym. But you didn’t. You kept showing up, getting back on the line when the coaches had you run again. It hurt and it was hard, but as you kept going, you built endurance and you grew stronger.
In the places of pain, it’s a struggle to keep showing up, to keep meeting with God, to keep hoping. But in the words of a dear friend, “Cling to faith!” Because on the other side of your pain, you’ll see glimpses of how God worked in it. You’ll be stronger. You’ll be reminded of God’s promise that He’ll never leave you.
There is nothing else worth clinging to. In Psalm 73:25, it says, “Whom have I in heaven but you? And earth has nothing I desire besides you.” When your hope muscles are hurt, keep choosing to show up. Keep fixing your eyes on Him in faith. Keep choosing to hope through the pain, and while it may not seem like it, He will help you grow stronger.
Love,
Megan
Dear Younger Me,
Believe in yourself. When you’re tempted to doubt your abilities or you think you’re not good enough, remember that God has you where you are for a reason. You need to trust the people who see your potential. In fact, because you trust them, you need to believe that what they say about you is true. Because when you finally start seeing that you really can do it, you’re going to see that confidence grow, maybe not monumentally, but little by little.
Someday someone will tell you “confidence” should be your word for the year. Knowing you, “confidence” just might be your word for life. Be encouraged though, because it’s something that I’ve seen grow in you over time. I just want you to realize you need to believe in yourself. Remember that basketball game when something clicked and you scored your highest amount of points in a varsity game? It wasn’t the Strawberry Pop-Tarts you had for breakfast. I think in that game you had the confidence you needed. I only wish you would have kept it, but I’m glad you saw you could do it.
Maybe part of your struggle is the desire to please others. You’re so worried about whether or not they believe in you that you don’t see that the only one who doesn’t believe in you is you. And ultimately, it’s God you are working for, like it says in Colossians 3:23, “Work willingly at whatever you do, as though you were working for the Lord rather than for people.”
Love,
Megan
Dear Younger Me,
As you face this new season, don’t worry about whether God will be with you. He’s always proven faithful and shown you that even in new seasons, He’s with you just as He was before. Sometimes it’s the beginning of a new year, and sometimes it’s the beginning of a new season, but at every new beginning don’t doubt God’s presence.
Some seasons look different than others – some are filled with the best of blessings, and others have brought more pain. Yet God walks with you through them all. In Psalm 23 it says, “Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me…” and in Isaiah 43:19 it says, “See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.” And even though Jesus was physically leaving His disciples, He told them this in Matthew 28:20, “And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” He would later give them the Holy Spirit to always be with them.
Those promises are yours, too. Looking around the corner at the “new” can be scary, but it doesn’t have to be when you remember how every time you’ve been nervous for something new, God has shown up for you just as He did before.
Love,
Megan
Dear Younger Me,
Appreciate the angels. I know you wanted to be Mary in the Sunday School program for just once, and you’re kind of bummed about being an angel again, not to mention that the halo headbands hurt. But if you think about the Christmas story, angels had a pretty cool role. They got to bring such good news to each person in the story – Zechariah, Mary, Joseph, and the shepherds.
The angels’ message sent the shepherds into Bethlehem to see Jesus, which propelled them to tell the rest of the town the good news themselves. What an incredible honor! So as you perform the role of an angel, remember what their message of Christ’s birth did for each person in the story. The message God instructed them to bring would change each of their lives.
It’s a message that we need to remember, too. One thing I’ve loved being reminded of this year is that while our lives are not perfect and we are broken people, that Jesus came born as perfection to save us. He doesn’t ask us to be perfect to save us. He came knowing that we aren’t. And because of His coming and His dying for us we are covered by His perfection and being made more like Him every day.
So as an angel in the program proclaiming, ‘“Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you,”’ celebrate that role of bringing the good news that changed lives about the One who came to save.
Love,
Megan