These last few days have been really strange for me. In the midst of purging one of our basement storage units, I unearthed a box of old journals. I wasn’t quite sure if I should keep them or not…didn’t know if it was appropriate…or even healthy to hold onto the past. before I made that decision, I decided to sit down with a cup of coffee during naptime and go through them.

I should say that I kept very detailed journals…wrote on company letterhead when I was temping and then rubber cemented the pages into a book, circled things in magazines and glued those in between prose…wrote under all types of circumstances and in all environments. If you asked anyone who has grown up with me about my writing, they would tell you I often emailed middle-of-the-night musings and sent them out to everyone in my inbox. Why I felt the need to share my deepest thoughts and longings with the world, I don’t know.

I should also say that I’m not proud of the things I found in those pages…the words of a very confused and impossible girl. And the drama? Oh, you would think it was all part of one of those terrible Lifetime movie miniseries. Things were SO important, the hurts were SO big, and the disappointments were great. And I haven’t even mentioned the language…enough to make anyone blush.

Reflection has come upon me this week. It dawned on me that I will be leaving Chicago 10 years almost to the day I moved here, straight off the turnip truck. My plan was always to go to grad school…and from there, who knows, be a Star maybe? I got very close to getting into the school of my dreams, a conservatory in Denver that only accepts 3 women a YEAR (or at least they did at the time), out of hundreds…flew to the callback, auditioned in front of the entire faculty and student body. I was one of 7 women, I think…most of them breathtaking on and off the stage.

I’ll never understand how I made it there, I think back to my college career and my work here in the city, and I’m not sure I was ever very good. I think I had a ton of drive, and I was a workhorse, and I loved Shakesperean verse like nothing else in my life. Truly, it was my calling at the time. But did I have the raw talent it takes to truly succeed? Maybe, maybe not. As it turns out, I didn’t make it into my dream school. I was crushed. Heartbroken. Instead, I moved to Chicago, knowing only one person, my friend Courtney from school. And maybe I spent the next three years trying to make up for that disappointment.

Whatever it was, somehow God led me to Vann…through the pain, and the horrible choices, and the questionable habits. God was still faithful to deliver me. I haven’t auditioned in over 3 years…and all of those connections I made pounding the streets have faded away. All that sweat, all those tears.

I think of something that a woman at Park (our church) told the crowd at a women’s conference a couple years ago…to the mothers: God doesn’t forget about your dreams while you are raising your children. He doesn’t forget your heart, what you are passionate about, what you long for. I hope that’s true.

I never accomplished what I originally set out to do. What does that say about me? What do I teach my daughters about following [their] dreams? Oh, I “worked” and I had some amazing experiences, took some killer classes with people I greatly admired (and still do), and got to audition for places like Chicago Shakespeare and Steppenwolf. And I guess along the way, I found myself…and I found God.

All of this to say, my heart is heavy with the hurts of the past…for things my naive 22 year old self said to people who are no longer friends, and for the sweet ones who still put up with me after all these years…for choices I made that I truly, truly regret. And for whatever reason I want to reach out to those people and make things right. Vann told me that I need to forgive myself…that everyone goes through those crazy “20’s” years and lives to tell about it. What I do know is that I’m sorry to those people and I wish I could sit down with my 22 year old self and tell her to get a grip.

Like I said, reflection. Can’t help myself.