“I may not be where I want to be, but thank God I’m not where I used to be.” ~ Joyce Meyer

I had a conversation with a dear one the other night, and he said to me, “Don’t tell me you’re not the person you were five years ago.”

Hmmmmmm . . . .

Okay, I won’t say it to you. Truth is, I’m NOT the person I was five years ago. No one is. Even a corpse changes over five years with the rate of decomposition. Anyone who is living, and breathing has gone through life changes, however subtle, that affect how they think, how they react, their perspective . . . basically WHO they are. So I decided to celebrate my changes by writing a letter to who I was.

Dear Karen (of the past),

I know this sounds odd, and it’s not as bad as ‘Back to the Future’ made it out to be, but . . . five years from now, you will be a completely different person. Not just in the physical sense of hairstyle, or hair color, or weight or body compensation. But in so many other ways.

In the next five years, you will not only finish chemo and Master’s degree, you will change jobs and locations. Having dreamed of relocating somewhere other than Missouri, you will have the gumption and fortitude to re-start a life in Alabama. As usual, nothing will go easy and you will struggle with doubts, financial difficulties, and stress but eventually things will start to fall into a pattern.

And then , , , BAM. As your life usually goes, there will be two more children added to the mix unexpectedly, (and no, that hysterectomy was final . . . nothing grew back). You will have added financial stressors, responsibilities and more time spent in prayer with your rosary than you could ever imagine you would.

In the next five years, you will —

• read more books
• speak to groups of up to 300 people
• help more people
• laugh, cry and shake your head in wonder
• survive a pandemic
• lose your sense of self and find it again

All of these things will make you not so much a ‘different’ person, but a person with more depth, a deeper faith, a wider perspective, a greater ability to discern what is and what isn’t important in life, and add more skills to your repertoire. Things that you think are important now, you will realize were only for a season.

Fasten your seatbelt dear, the next five years will be a wild ride!

Love,

Karen (in five years)

Much like we expect children to grow and mature each year, learning new skills . . . it should follow that it doesn’t end when we reach adulthood. The things I know now are more than the things I knew at 25 or 35 or 45. I would venture to say that if a person ISN’T a different person than they were five years ago, that is a sad, sad situation indeed.