A Simple Letter to My Fifteen Year Old Self

Nostalgia: A Preface to a letter I wrote my Fifteen Year Old Self

Dear Fifteen! Below is a letter to my fifteen year old self. But first, let me say-I have a twenty year high school reunion coming up as I write this.  Knowing this reunion is fast approaching, I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting and feeling a lot of nostalgia.  I have pulled out my old yearbooks, looked people up, tried to remember names and faces from middle school who I didn’t go to high school with. Even going back as far as elementary school, experiences I shared with friends in those very early years of life have been keeping my mind occupied. 

I am very fond of my childhood. I wish I could go back to that time and place.  Oh, to once again be young, naïve, carefree, and to even lack a sense of how others might perceive me, or lack a sense of social and emotional responsibility.  I would love to have complete and wonderful joy by from a simple toy, puzzle, gift. I,ve been thinking about feeling the gentleness of wind against my face while riding hands free on my bike with my neighborhood friends. I want that bliss from eating a popsicle or cookie dough in the park, playing baseball games in the same park after school, or the sound of my mother on the front porch calling myself and brothers home for dinner. 

In my many nostalgia-rich reflections, I realize I would not change a single thing.  Not a thing!?  Not even the NOT-so-desirable memories? Wait a minute! Not a thing!? 

Okay, so in all this nostalgia, I have also been thinking about some of the uglier moments. Maybe I would change some things after all. Like the time I fought with a friend in third grade. A couple days later she approached me at recess to apologize, and my response was, “so”. Those moments when I inflicted verbal, mental, and emotional pain on others through fights and rivalries. Or those times when I lied or stole from others. Yes, I would like to change my behavior and response in those moments. However, it is not to change any of those regrets that makes me want to go back. So why do I want to go back then?

Nostalgia Has Me Going Back

In having a bit of nostalgia, it isn’t the ugly memories I would want to go back to change.  And it isn’t for the good memories that I want to go back either.  I desire to relive all of these beautiful (and ugly) moments simply because I just want to be in those places again, in those moments. I just want to savor it all because I didn’t savor it at all then.  To capture and record it, every touch, smell, taste, sight, sound.  That’s the funny irony of youthfulness, isn’t it? As children, we are so eager to grow up and be mature adults that we rush through the days and years, pushing them behind us as quickly as we can. However, my adult self…

I am nervous that my memory is fading as I age and my mind is beginning to fill in the gaps for me.  If I knew then how important and wonderful each of these moments would be to my future, aging self, I would have captured them better for long term memory. I would not have wished them away in hopes that I could grow up fast, quickly mature to become an independent, self-sufficient adult.

What are those wonderful nostalgia moments for you?  What moments in your past would you want to return to just to savor and take it all in again?

Now let’s get to the letter I wrote to my fifteen year old self.

Letter to My Younger Self

All this nostalgia has prompted me to write a letter to my fifteen year old self.  Although I cannot go back, if I had an opportunity to relive the wonderful moments I cherish so much, there are some things I am giving caution against, as well as some exhortations because, as with us all, hindsight is 20/20.

Dear Fifteen Year Old Me,

There is a great deal of life to be lived: experiences, travel, and relationships, all to be lived. And you will certainly live them! Don’t let your present circumstances dampen your desires.  High school is a cruel, cold, and lonely place, but it is such a short time in your life. I promise when I say that the circumstances that will trouble you through this brief time are really not that important in the grand scheme. And, you will get through them and be better for it.

You are going to experience the great pain of loss in just a few short years from now. You will love him deeply, but his choices will bring about pain, sadness, confusion between you both, and ultimately, great loss. It is going to be difficult for you, but don’t let yourself be driven away. He will need your support in more ways than you can know. Don’t abandon him, and don’t give up on him. There will be nothing you can do to save him, so please, just give him all the support and love you can while he is still on this side of eternity. And when he does go, lean into God with every fiber of your being. God will show you the greatness of friendship with Him. You will only be able to move forward if you are moving towards God.

You will find your tribe, your lifelong friends.  But don’t take them for granted.  Don’t be cold toward them, and do stay in contact with them as you move and travel around. Learn from your regrets with your best friends in third grade, fourth grade, and ninth grade, and don’t repeat.  But if you do hurt a friend, don’t stress. Things will work themselves out, partly because you and your friends will be older, more mature, and much more capable of extending grace, compassion, and forgiveness when necessary.  However, be true, be kind, and be accountable.  Don’t boss. Don’t criticize. Lean into your friendships – you will need them, so stay close, no matter what.

You’re going to go deep into God, like you never, ever imagined before.  And then you will question God like you never would have imagined you would do when you were in that deep place with Him.  You will have some anger towards God about a few things, and you will have some shameful, humiliating secrets.  You can’t hide from God though, and your choices will only bring pain upon yourself.  Know that God is unchanging, and His thoughts toward you are unchanging.  Know that He will be there, waiting for you to approach Him. Trust Him through all of your relationships, especially with your future husband.  God will bring him along in due time, and he will be exactly what you need and desire.  Don’t test, doubt, or challenge God in this. Believe that His heart and purpose for you is perfect, because it is.

One more thing. Please, I beg you, DON’T go to Russia, at least not with strangers.  It is a very dark, and very cold place, a place where you don’t want to be alone.  If you really MUST go, wait for another time when you can go with people who love and care about you.

Sincerely, Your Forty Year Old Self

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A Simple Letter to My Fifteen Year Old Self