DYM: You are more adaptable to change than you think

Dear 17-year-old Kinsley,

You’re more adaptable to change than you think you are.

As I write this letter to you, I’m sitting on the back porch of my house with two of my best friends. It’s a beautiful spring evening in Lexington, Kentucky. I spent a long day at work, planning for the upcoming school year with a staff team that I have grown to love. We joined staff with Cru, the ministry that greatly influenced our life in college, last April. We have a cat named Freddy, and we live with one of our best friends we met in Chattanooga in college, Jade.

I’m sure most of this will come as a great shock to you, as literally everything I have written about counters the plan that we had when we graduated high school at 17. We planned to graduate from Western Kentucky University and major in pre-veterinary medicine to then go onto vet school at Auburn University. We thought we would get married in between our two degrees to our high school boyfriend.

Before your freshmen year of college begins, your high school boyfriend will break up with you, and you’ll be lost, heartbroken and grievous of the life you wanted. After your freshmen year of college, you’ll transfer to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga to work at a church and pursue studying philosophy and religion, political science and sociology. You’ll get really involved in Cru, and you’ll go through a really difficult time of depression, loneliness and, again, grieving the life you wanted. The COVID-19 pandemic will hit towards the end of your junior year, and you - an extrovert - will be stuck living in an apartment alone for several months.

You will lose your Poppy, the grandfather you’ve always been closest to, at 20.

Some of your best friends will decide they do not want to be in your life anymore.

You’ll go on dates with boys, and you’ll face heartbreak.

During your senior year of college, you’ll get diagnosed with PCOS, a condition that causes you to gain weight — therefore losing your high school athletic body — affects your hormones and fertility.

The summer after graduation, you’ll get diagnosed with Bipolar II, or soft Bipolar, Disorder.

Then, you’ll move to Lexington and spend your first year on staff with Cru with an incredible team that you’d never want to leave.

Though you feel that you’ll stay awhile, your job with Cru will move you to Knoxville, Tennessee.

You’re more adaptable to change than you think you are.

You will grow, change, cry, rejoice, be still, run as fast as you can towards something, be hurt, experience deep friendship, forgiveness, love and peace. The overarching theme of your relationship with God is that he is a God that walks with you through all things, and, time and time again, you will be comforted by Psalm 23:

“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me… Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever” (Psalm 23:1-4, 6).

Something you’ll learn between 17 and 22 is that Jesus is the one who will get you through all the things you face, and he will often be the only one who is there. In the chaos of the breakups and the college transfers and the diagnoses, Jesus is the one who will walk with you through the valley of the shadow of death. You will come to know Him intimately as “Jehovah Rapha,” the Lord who heals and comforts, and later you’ll get that tattooed on your wrist as a reminder of his faithfulness in your life.

Though you think you know much right now, the world is only just beginning to open to you at 17. There is no way you could expect what’s coming because even this letter leaves out many things that are too personal and sweet to reveal to you now.

To Kinsley at 17, I have but a few parting words of wisdom.

Do not take any moment, memory or experience for granted. Treasure them and hold them close to your heart.

Trust the process of sanctification.

Don’t get so hung up on what your body looks like in the mirror. Your thighs will grow, and your stomach will push against your jeans, but your body is the least interesting part of who you are.

And, you are wonderfully made.

Put Jesus first in everything, and he will make known to you the path of life.

When one friend walks away, another will come around. Be patient and trust that you are worthy of love from others.

Run hard after the things that strike a passion in you. Don’t settle for things that don’t excite you.

You are resilient and strong and brave. You’re going to be just fine. I’ll catch up with you in a few years.

Love, Kinsley at 22