"For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. My heart faints within me!"

Job 19:25-27 (ESV)

𝘴𝘦𝘭𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘸𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨

(As you will soon find, this is not your typical "Dear Younger Me" letter. It's written to my current self from my future self. That creative twist on a common concept is not original to me; I wrote this piece based on a prompt for a contest in the Young Writer's Workshop—and ended up winning third place! I hope this letter written from an uncommon perspective is an encouragement to you.)

𝘋𝘦𝘢𝘳 𝘠𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘨𝘦𝘳 𝘔𝘦

Dear younger me,

It may surprise you to know that I haven’t forgotten you. The thought of you still crosses my mind from time to time.

But even though I haven’t forgotten you, I have nearly forgotten what it was like to be you. What was it like to feel hunger and thirst and pain? How did it feel to cry tears of sorrow? What was it like to be tempted and either resist or give in? What was it like to feel shame and regret over wrong choices? What was it like to experience strain and tension in relationships? How did it feel to be lost or in danger? To be tired? To go to sleep and wake up again? To not be able to go anywhere you wanted whenever you wanted to? To be bound by time? To walk by faith and not by sight? It sounds strange to say it, but it feels foreign to me. That is your life, but it isn’t mine. Even if I could go back in time and relive life as you know it, I wouldn’t. Life is so much better here.

I know that’s hard for you to imagine. You’ve never known another reality, but believe me when I say there is one. It’s so much greater, so much better, so much more wonderful than you can begin to think. It’s easy for you to forget about the reality of life beyond what you know. But it’s always here waiting to be revealed at the appointed time.

I wish you would think about me more. How easily you get caught up in the daily duties that fill your waking moments. How quickly you lose sight of what’s beyond your earthly vision and fixate on what’s all around you instead of what’s above and within you. How readily you forget that everything will change on the day you pass through the portal that transports you to another realm.

I want you to never lose sight of what matters most. When you get here, you will fully realize that what really matters is what echoes into eternity, and you will wish you had spent more time on what outlasts time.

Cling to faith, hope, and love. Faith and hope are only needed in the life you now live, but the Lord uses them to develop lasting character in you. Faith and hope will be fulfilled when time is ended because then you will see the face of God. You’ll never again feel distant from Him or follow Him even though you can’t see Him.

But love will remain. My love for God and for others is deeper and stronger than it ever was before, untouched by suspicion, unwounded by distrust, unhindered by jealousy, untainted by resentment, unabated by apathy—perfectly pure. The love others have for me is the same. And the love God has for me is as boundless as it has always been, but now I can fully receive it without the barriers of broken humanity blocking the way.

Never lose sight of the greater story God is writing in your life. If you could see the plot of your life from heaven’s point of view, it would transform your outlook. But you can only occasionally see what God is doing in and through your story, and even then it’s only a glimpse of His work. He’s doing so much more in and through you than you could ever know. Trust that He is working, even when it isn’t obvious.

Never lose faith that God is good and faithful and true. It’s okay to doubt, but don’t let doubt derail you by dragging you into unbelief. Even when it seems like God has forgotten you, know that He hasn’t. The hands that hold the galaxies in motion are the same hands holding you. When you get here, you will realize that He never let you go all through your life, and He was watching over you even when you didn’t know it.

I’m not allowed to tell you whether all your questions will be answered when you arrive, but let me tell you something I know for sure: once you are where I am, it won’t matter to you anymore. The grandeur of what awaits you far outweighs what burdens you where you are. I’m not saying that to minimize your questions, but to help you see them in heaven’s light. Take it from me: I know this from experience.

Keep pressing on, brave warrior. The life that awaits you is worth the struggle and the fight. It’s so wonderful I can’t explain it in words you would understand. It’s far beyond the limits of the language you know—it would overwhelm you to try to comprehend it. And even if I could describe life here in terms you could grasp, I wouldn’t. It would make your life that much harder there to know the wonder of what life is like here.

I know that sometimes you feel all alone, like a firefly in the night piercing the dark with the light it carries inside. It can be hard to keep shining in a world of darkness. Trust me; one day the darkness will be destroyed, and you’ll be set free to fly in a world of light.

I can’t wait until you’re here.

With deepest love,

Your future self in heaven

𝘸𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘶𝘱𝘥𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘴

I have some exciting news to share with you all: I'm getting published again! (Yay!) I'm going to be featured alongside several other young writers in an interview anthology titled We Are Writers. This collection features our answers to various writing-related questions, including when we started writing, influences that have shaped our writing, our writing goals and habits, and more. If you're curious to learn more about how writers' minds work, then this book is for you!

There isn't an official release date yet, but the plan is for this anthology to be available in the near future. I will be sure to share with you more details once it's available, but for now, I wanted to give you a sneak peek.

𝘢𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵 (𝘪𝘯𝘴𝘱𝘪𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘴)

“Our purpose has less to do with what we do and more to do with who we are becoming in Christ.”

— Ashley Hales —

-"It's Okay to Grow Slow" (Anna Moore) — The theme of spiritual growth has been on my mind often for a while now (you will probably be reading about it on my blog in the not-so-far future), and this post was such an encouragement to me, as it reminded me of the purposeful pace of growth in each of our lives. It doesn't look the same for everyone, and that's okay.

-"Here In This Moment" (Beckah Shae) — Lately I've been loving this gorgeous worship song that speaks of the unshakable security of soul and the unfathomable peace of heart found only in God's presence.

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