21 Thoughts for 21 Years

Time flies when you’re looking and moves even faster when you aren’t. As a child, everyone looked ahead. Whether it was toward Christmas or college, we all anticipated, worked toward, and dreamed about the future, about what was to come. Children don’t stop and think about how great they have it, or how hard the future may be. Time seems to take forever to pass. They see the hope of a lifetime stretched before them. Today or rather yesterday now, I turned twenty-one. I’m officially not a child anymore. As I think about the last twenty-one years (or at least the ones I remember), I realize everything I have learned, whether I wanted to or not. There were a ton, but here’s a short list thoughts:
  1. Your siblings will be your worst enemies, but also your best friends if you let them
  2. Having a large family teaches you how to make and keep friends
  3. If you have what you need, not what you want, you are blessed
  4. Take a moment and be thankful for what you have
  5. Technology can never replace imagination in the back yard and creek
  6. Angry words don’t make anyone feel better
  7. When someone hurts you, you pick yourself up, brush the dust off, and move on
  8. Pain breaks you down; to build you back up stronger
  9. Strength isn’t something you feel, it’s something others notice
  10. Not every door that has been opened is meant to be walked through
  11. This life isn’t about me, it’s about others
  12. God allows trouble and pain to teach you things, you thought you knew
  13. If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always be what you’ve always been
  14. Stuff happens, what matters is how you react
  15. Sometimes you have to lose something to realize how much it meant
  16. God is the only person who won’t let you down or hurt you
  17. Always strive to do your best, don’t settle for good enough
  18. Never get so caught up that you forget to smile
  19. Don’t take anything for granted, it could be gone in a moment
  20. Freedom doesn’t come free
  21. 1 Corinthians 15:10: “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.”
Every day I am given, to God be the glory.
~Rachel

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