Twenty-Four

I turned 25 yesterday.  I wrote some things slowly over the last several months about what I learned when I was 24.  Here are some things it taught me, in no specific order.  Some I learned gracefully and others I've kind of stumbled my way through—but I friggin' learned.

Confrontation is not always a negative thing.  Being honest, upfront, and open about situations saves a lot of time and can also save you from the resentment you feel if you're passive and closed off about your feelings but expect people to understand your feelings (hilarious).  Passive people exhaust me and make me want to claw my eyes out.  I'm not sure why confrontation is viewed so negatively; there are classy, polite, loving, and professional ways to approach hard conversations.  And do you know what it says when you have those hard conversations?  I care enough about you to sit through this discomfort and talk it out. I care enough to fight for this friendship, for this culture, for this relationship, for this job, for this place.  Have the hard conversations, people.  It's life.  It's all messy and hard and wonderful.

In February I started eating lunch with my niece (who was in Kindergarten) once a week at her school, and Thursdays with her became something I was excited about and genuinely enjoyed.  During lunch we'd talk about what she was learning that day and then we'd let our imaginations run wild during recess.  She reminded me of the simple things, like how fun it is to think of as many words as you can that start with the letter "Q" and playing tag at recess or enjoying the homemade artwork plastered on the walls of the hallways of the school.  Life always felt sweeter on Thursdays.  I always felt like I paid more attention.

What someone texts you late at night means nothing if it doesn't match what they do in the daytime.  For some reason, words sound prettier at 2am.  But they're not.  They're still just words.  Don't get caught up in the fluff.

A prayer I found myself praying the most the last year was, Jesus make me better.  Keep me safe, but don't make me sheltered.

I can't do box jumps to save my life.

You should find a friend you can stay up until 2am drinking wine with and talking about solving the world's problems because it will make you feel less alone in the endeavor to solve the world's problems.  And you'll realize you aren't alone in being a social justice bleeding heart.

I went through a 7 day long training with the YWCA a couple weeks ago to be able to volunteer with them.  In that training, I learned more about Domestic Violence, Sexual Assault, Childhood Trauma, Racism, etc than I ever thought I could fit in my brain.  I realized a lot of my own bias or myths I believed about those topics and resolved a lot of them.  It was overwhelming at times to listen to all the systems that are broken or oppressive, but the main thing it taught me was this:  change doesn't start with government or systems or black-and-white written paragraphs.  Change starts around kitchen tables when you talk with your kids about their day and how the things in the news makes them feel.  Change happens when a friend says something perpetrating rape culture and you politely and boldly correct them.  Change happens in elementary schools when teachers look kids in the eye and tell them they're worthy of giving and receiving love and feeling safe. Change happens when a group of people decide to host a conversation between peers on a Saturday afternoon about the racism and violence happening in our city streets and what we can do about it.  Change happens long before the law catches up.  Change became something I felt capable of, and instead of feeling overwhelmed by the system I felt empowered to start with my words and my actions and encouraging the people around me to do the same.

It's okay to take the job with a huge pay cut if it means you enjoy getting out of bed in the mornings.  If I have to be miserable at a job someday if it means providing for my family or myself, I'll do it in a heart beat.  But I'm not in that position now.  I made the decision this year to take a big pay cut in order to enjoy my career again and love going to work again.  Money is just money.  I have no regrets about making less of it.  I have enough and I'm happy and thankful.

Speaking of money, I learned that when I made more of it, it didn't magically make me better with it.  All of my anxiety related to finances didn't go away when I was making more.  I still had the same issues as before.  Which was really disheartening to learn.  But I think I've come a little ways since learning that.  I.E. I have meticulously kept my checkbook balanced for TWO WEEKS STRAIGHT I don't just guess how much money I have and have mini strokes while logging into check my account (my mother is probably shaking her head in disappointment.  Sorry, mom)  There is still hope for my anxious heart!  (but also please let me marry a CPA in Jesus' name amen)

On a similar note, I gave up traveling nursing for some different reasons other than wanting to enjoy work again.  (Not that I was miserable as a traverler, but it's hard). When I first started traveling, I went to North Carolina for a contract and learned so much about myself and my career and people in general, but I was also kind of running from my problems.  Then I came back and I've taken a few different contracts in different parts of Oklahoma over the last year.  I swore when I moved back I'd continue to follow this dream but not run from my problems.  Which I partly upheld.  But traveling was still been my figurative pair of running shoes.  Even in my staying I'd held on to leaving in little ways.  Even taking contracts in my home state, I never had to commit somewhere for more than 13 weeks at a time.  I started living my life in 3 month intervals.  "I don't know where I'll be in 3 months."  It was my favorite phrase.  My arms-length distance from people and places.  My excuse not to commit to anything: a permanent job, a relationship, volunteering or serving in any capacity.  I started to feel like I was living my life in the shallow end, and there were so many things happening that made me feel like I should stay in Oklahoma.  I knew I needed to stay, but the thought of giving up traveling made me feel like someone reached into my chest and squeezed the air out of my lungs.  That's when I realized that somehow in the last year I'd gotten really good at leaving.  If I was a commitment phobe before, traveling enabled that exponentially.  Also, I felt a huge pressure to travel (mostly from other people).  There's this culture of "Oh, you're single and young and no kids?  Why aren't you traveling the world?!"  Wanderlust, I think they call it.  It's everywhere, this message to be going somewhere or doing something or adventuring instead of staying put.  And I noticed most of the people saying that to me were the people who had never done it.  Traveling nursing is fun but it can be lonely.  You don't have community and you don't feel connected to people.  And we are created to connect to people.  Here is what I learned: those people are very right.  I could travel the world if I wanted to at this point in my life.  But at what cost to me?  I still have things I'd be leaving behind even if it doesn't look like a husband and kids right now.  Wanderlust isn't wrong, but I decided I had too much to leave behind at this point.  Maybe I'll pursue traveling nursing again someday.  But for now, I'm staying.  And I'm digging my heels in and getting my elbows dirty in the trenches of OKC.  And I couldn't be happier.
  
I had a paragraph written on the rough draft of this post for along time that, if published, probably would have offended some friends I love dearly.  In previous years of this blog, I probably would've published the paragraph with the rationale that it's my blog and I can write whatever I want and people can deal with it.  But one thing I learned at 24 was that you can hold a truth close to you that you don't have to publish if it will hurt people close to you.  There is a time for offense and a time not to publish the offensive thing.  This is a time for the latter.  I value those friendships more than I value sharing something I learned during a difficult season.  So because I learned that I deleted the paragraph, which doesn't lessen the weight it carries in my own heart or make it any less true for me.  It just won't cause other people harm in the meantime. And I'm okay with that.

Baking bread is holy work.  And horribly messy.

There is a difference in being in the mess with someone and owning their mess: the former makes you a good friend or family member, the latter makes you tired.  Sometimes your friends do stupid things.  Sometimes your family does stupid things.  But you don't have to take it as your own. And you can love them with everything you've got while simultaneously shaking your head in frustration.  You can tell them they're still wonderful and that you're crazy about them.  But you don't have to own their mistakes as your mistakes.

Training new people at work reminds me of how much of a control freak I am.  Sorry, orientees.  It's not you, it's me.

Sass is still not a fruit of the Spirit, although I keep wishing it would somehow pop up on the list.  Still working on Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness, and Self Control.

I went through a time where I missed how my life looked 3 years ago.  Like really really missed it.  I missed the people who were in my life, where I went to church, how I spent my weekends.  I felt homesick for those times.  When some of my best friends moved out of the house they lived in when I first met them and the group of friends that framed those years for me, I was so sad.  It felt like when they moved out of that house it made it finite that those times were over and things were really different and they would never be the same.  But I learned that aching for those years was making me lessen the sweetness of the times happening right in front of me.  I finally got to the point where I tucked those times away.  I still hold them close and I'm thankful for what they were when they were for me, but I feel like I finally moved on and have settled into how life looks now.  Life will always ebb and flow.  People move out of houses.  You make new memories in different ones.  And it's all okay.

Everyone should go to counseling.  Seriously.  I'm that person that has gone to counseling and now tells everyone I know that they should go to counseling.  If I haven't told you that personally yet, I probably will.  Because you should go to counseling.  It's where I landed in my early twenties when I realized my issues had issues and my friends weren't qualified to handle them.  But I'm so glad I decided to live life abundantly by seeking freedom from the things that were stealing my joy and made me feel like I was just surviving instead of really living.  Counseling felt like unbuilding myself, brick by brick, and rearranging the foundation.  I finally understand myself because I read the freaking blueprints, and it was hard and holy work.  It feels good to really know myself after 24 years.  But I also learned that there's a difference in knowing the truth and living like you believe it.  Like actually moving into the house you built.  It took me awhile to live like I believed the Truth, to build a home in it and stay.

I started volunteering at a free clinic in December.  It makes my little ER heart nervous and confused when I actually have to listen to patients talk about symptoms they've been having for years.  I have to care and have to write it down, whereas normally in the ER I'd tune that part out and make you skip to the part about what makes you believe you're having an emergency today.  Nothing in the clinic is an emergency and I don't really know what to do with myself half the time.  But you know what it is teaching me?  How to slow down.  The staff jokes about me being really fast at everything I do, and I'm like….yes, that is the only setting I know.  Sorry?  I learned that I feel panicky in quiet settings like that clinic; I prefer loud, hustle, trauma, emergency situations.  That clinic is slowly (literally and figuratively) teaching me the beauty of taking time.  In numerous ways.  Time to get to know the patients.  Time to walk slowly and talk with people in the hallway.  Just…time.  It's weird but I'm thankful.  It's been good for me.

Traveling nursing taught me a million skills more related to people than to nursing.  I think I've mastered the art of being the new girl and can profile a group of people in minutes; group dynamics seem to be generally the same no matter where you go.  I've also learned that when you work a temporary job it's easy for people to see you as temporary too, which can make them not want to get to know you and makes it harder for you to get to know them.  Sometimes I had to remind myself, get to know them anyway.  Life isn't meant to be lived in the shallow end.

This is probably one of the most important things I learned:  Asking myself "What does she have that I didn't?" is one of the most destructive things I could ever ask myself.  Is she smarter, funnier, prettier, more sure of herself, easier to love, less opinionated, less family drama, less personal issues?  Not being chosen used to eat me alive and keep me awake at night.  I think it's one of the hardest feelings to stomach.  But somehow the last year I learned to be okay with it.  Not being chosen by one person doesn't devalue me or make me any less of anything—it just makes me not their cup of tea, and that's something I learned to be okay with.  I learned it slowly and painfully a couple of times in particular, but I learned to wish them well with the choice they made and be okay with the fact that it wasn't me.  I also felt like trying to compare myself with another woman somehow always ended up with me trying to devalue her in my mind to make myself feel better, which I decided was a really shitty thing to do.  So I conclude the girls the guys ended up with seemed incredible, and I learned to be okay with that, too.  I thought about what I would say to a girl a guy dated before me if she were wondering the same things, and I decided I would be devastated if she were questioning herself in light of me.  I would grab her pretty face and tell her, "There is nothing wrong with you.  You are exactly who and what you are supposed to be.  Some people just don't fit."  So I started telling myself that.  

I learned that I need to let things be more often than giving multiple chances.  Looking back, I had too many relationships that were off and on, mostly because the guys would be wishy washy and I'd take them back too many times.  I learned that I had to walk away and let it be instead of answering them when they text 6 weeks later saying they're sorry and they missed me.  It all ended the same the other times.  If they don't choose you the first (or second) time around, they won't choose you.  Just let it be.

On that note, I think I settled into my singleness more than ever this year. (Yes, I'm that person talking about this.  I've cringed plenty of times about it, but it's important to me. And I realize I'm only 25 and I have plenty of time, but when you've been a bridesmaid 11 times & most of those friends are having babies or on their second baby, it can feel like you're somehow behind or not keeping up the pace).  There were moments I specifically remember aching so badly for someone to share life with and thinking I'll only ever hold everyone else's babies but my own.  But there were also moments I specifically knew I could only do certain things or love on my friends or family certain ways because it is just me right now.  I decided more than ever to pay attention to the things around me and contribute in the ways I could while I can.  When I'm married and when I have kids some day, that will change the way I spend my time.  So for now, I'm doing things the way I can do them at this point in my life and learning to love that I get the chance to.  I volunteer my time at a few different places that make me feel alive, spend more moments with family, love on friends through difficult times and be able to help in more spur of the moment situations.  Life has felt sweet more moments than not.  Before every married or divorced person rolls their eyes and thinks enjoy it, please hear me: I in no way think marriage is when my life will start.  I believe marriage sounds like hard and holy work, and I have a very deep respect for every one of you who is doing the work or has done the work of marriage.  But I will argue that being single at this point in my life has been hard in different ways than marriage ever would be. Walking through losing a family member, making big career decisions, holidays when family tensions are high, walking into an empty apartment after horrible days at work…those things I walked into and out of alone (okay and sometimes with a lot of wine).  No teammate, no one to trust who contributed a second income, no one who would tell me that even if I chose the job with the major pay cut that they'd love me anyway and we'd figure out a way to make it work, no one to hold me while I cried or sit by me at the funeral, no one to weather holidays with because holidays still feel weird.  Doing those things alone was hard, but I learned to be really okay with myself.  And I'm proud of myself for that.

There is bravery in leaving, and bravery in staying.  I was brave in both at times.

I got a cat this year.  I never wanted a pet for the longest time because my practical brain was like…why would I get attached to something that's just going to die? That sounds awful. And then my heart that was 3 sizes too small realized EVERYONE AND EVERYTHING dies at some point and avoiding loving something for that reason was ridiculous.  So I bought a cat who acts like Satan most days but I freakin' love her.  I ugly cried the first time I left her overnight at the Vet and called my mom saying, "I wasn't supposed to love her this much but I love that damn cat."  To which my mom laughed and responded, "Honey, it's okay that you love her that much, YOU WERE CREATED TO LOVE THAT MUCH."  Mama's right.  I didn't really expect to become the person that posts pictures of her cat on the internet, but I am that person now.  And I don't care.  Meredith, you're the wildest, craziest cat in the world but you're MY crazy bossy mean cat and I love you to pieces. Thanks for growing my heart a little.  And for ruining every nice thing I owned.  Kidding.  Your claws are not missed.

There were a few times this year when my medical brain and my faith were confronted at the exact same time.  My two worlds collided.  Even though I've always believed Faith and Medicine can coexist together, these times seemed different for some reason...probably because it meant me facing my belief that Faith trumps Medicine (which is hard for my nurse brain). One time in particular was when I had a patient who was going to leave the hospital AMA (against medical advice).  When we went to have her sign the AMA paperwork, we walked into the room to find her husband on his knees, one hand on her belly and one hand raised, praying the most fervent prayers with tears streaming down his face and the most determined-humbled-desperate look.  Even though he wasn't speaking English, I felt like I understood every word.  I stood in the back of the room watching, humbled and conflicted, because I believed in the same God they were praying to but my medical brain said if she left she would die.  My coworkers called the couple extremists, and I agreed with them at the time.  But later I couldn't shake the couple from my mind and the things they had said that day, and the Lord whispered to me, Do you think I can't heal her?  Don't you believe I parted seas, gave sight to people who couldn't see, told lame men to rise up and walk?  I remember in that moment my only regret was not getting on my knees and praying and believing with them. I never saw them again, and I believe with everything in me she was healed that day.  That moment changed my life.  And only months after that day I found myself again pushing everything in my medical brain aside, me the one on my knees late at night laying hands on one of my best friend's bellies, praying desperate real honest prayers with every ounce of faith in my bones that there wouldn't be trace of cancer left in her body.  And I believe she will be healed.

I was reminded more than ever that there is nothing Jesus does on accident.  Most of that manifested in me finding a church.  When I started going I was convinced I didn't want to get involved because I didn't think I could put effort into a church again and feel burned like I had before.  I was hurt and tired and leery in so many ways when it came to church, but I was desperate too.  I tried a new church every Sunday for months until I finally found one that seemed to fit. But I sat in the back for a couple of months and didn't connect with anyone.  There were small groups that were advertised, but I had been a part of a small group for a couple of years that was so good I was convinced I'd never find anything like it.  It somewhat fell apart awhile ago, and I still felt sad and let down from the fallout.  I didn't want to cultivate something new, because it's hard.  It's work.  It can be exhausting.  But I remembered when the Lord had nudged me so many times before, Find community and you'll find life, Kenz.  I remembered Him being right about that, so I eventually found a group.  It's different in so many ways but it's exactly what I need in my life.  It's immeasurably more than I could have hoped for.  And I was reminded again that community, your home team, is what can make or break you.  It's part of your livelihood.  It is so worth it.

One of the greatest gifts growing older has given me is the ability to care less and less about what other people think.  I feel more comfortable in my skin and my life and my choices than I ever have before.  I've had less regrets and more glad I learned that lesson and won't be doing that again instead of I wish I hadn't done that moments (maybe I'm also making better choices!).

I am a WAY better nurse than I am family member or friend of a patient. I spent way more time in hospital waiting rooms than I ever thought I would, and I'll keep spending more time in them because that's what you do for friends and family when they're sick. I know every medical professional knows they will eventually be the friend, family member, or patient themselves. But it really killed my nurse complex to feel completely out of the know and out of control. But guess what? It made me a way better nurse.  It's easy when I'm at work to forget what it's like sitting in the waiting room, but I don't want to forget.

I fell in love with Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream this year more than ever before in my life.  It kind of put Oreos in the background for me, which was somewhat of a semi-idenity crisis because Oreos have always been my first love. But Mint Chocolate Chip ice cream came to my rescue many times and I am thankful.  Maybe next year I'll learn how not to eat my feelings.

A coworker who shares a lot of the same heart as me for people and our job and books and deep conversations asked me once, if people could say anything about you, what would you hope it would be?  I said the first thing that came to my mind: that I wanted to be a safe place for people.  I think that encompasses a lot of things.  But I love that she asked me that question, because it made me more conscious of what I'm doing with my life and my time.

Having good neighbor(s) makes life fun.  Sometimes they leave notes on your car that can make a bad day better and text you when they're at the store asking if you need anything, which makes you feel really cared for.  It's nice.

I was more honest about my life at the age of 24 than I ever had been.  Secrets create a chasm I didn't want anymore, so I decided vulnerability and honesty made me feel alive and connected to the people around me.

Sometime in the last year I stopped thinking people were intentionally out to hurt me.  That sounds silly, but I think so many times when we're hurt we assume people intended for us to be.  But here's what I've figured out: we're all just doing the best we can.  None of us know exactly what we're doing, so we'll hurt one another inevitably.

Home is built inside of the words, I knew you'd be here.

There were moments I felt more alive in a field talking with homeless people than any night I wore fancy clothes and drank wine out of fancy glasses. 

I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be.  Life is precious and I'm thankful I get to be here. 

Cheers to 25! Bring it on.