(EDIT: My cell phone number has changed. Email me and ask me for it if you want it.)
Not this last one. This last one was not my best year. This next one.
Nineteen years ago today at 7:37am, I was born in Seattle, Washington.
Seattle taught me to love. It taught me to love my mother and my father very much, as they were the ones who gave me life, gave me food, and gave me their love. It taught me to love God, when I became a Christian at age 5 during a kindergarten class at Kent View Christian School. It taught me to love baseball, and the Mariners in particular, through my father, his father, and his brother. It taught me to love the rain and all the things that come with it. More than anything, it taught me to love life, and everything that is a part of it. Every day was an adventure with new things to explore, new friends to be made, new experiences to be had. The world would tell me that it's raining outside, I would respond that that's just another reason to go outside.
Twelve years ago we moved to Boise, Idaho.
Boise taught me to learn. I learned what it's like to move, and I learned to make the best of it, even though it may seem like life's dealt a hard hand. I learned so much through homeschooling. And I'm not just talking about my school subjects. (Heaven knows I didn't learn any of that.) I learned just how amazing of a woman my mother is. I learned what dedication she has, and just what love looks like. I learned how to make friends. I learned that girls aren't gross, they can actually be kinda cute some times. I learned more about the world around me, through homeschool testings (which are still some of my fondest memories of Boise), congressional awards, multiple trips around the country, and numerous other experiences. I learned how great friends can be in a tight-knit community like we had in our small Church which met in a grange hall with just half a dozen families. I learned what being a Christian was all about, and what Christ was all about, and what the relation between the two should look like.
Four years ago we moved to Sacramento, California.
Sacramento taught me to live. When we first moved there, I knew no one. I prayed to God, and He brought me a Homeschooled, Christian, Boy Scout Troop. Through Troop 401, He taught me more than I could ever hope to list on even a thousand pages. He began to teach me maturity, self-reliance, resistance to temptation, and standing up against peer pressure. Although it was just the beginning, and I still struggle with many of these things today, had it not been for these experiences, I would possibly not have learned until it was too late.
I learned how to earn a wage at the local theater, then the local sandwich shop. I learned how to get an education apart from my mother with my first two semesters of college at the local community college. I learned more about computers and how to work them, and I learned how to make some money doing it. I learned about my love of film and am just now beginning to fully explore that.
I learned how to destroy the trust of those I love by taking a midnight drive up the coast without telling anyone and then getting in an accident, totaling my car and breaking three bones in the process. I learned that physical pain pales in comparison to the pain that comes not even from your own broken heart, but from breaking the hearts of those you love. But I also learned just what true love is.
I learned the value of hard work through my Eagle Scout rank achievement.
I learned to dance like a fool.
I learned to love a girl, learned to make mistakes, learned to lose the girl, learned what a broken heart really feels like.
Then I figured out what self control meant. As I recently told a very good friend of mine, "The thing about avoiding temptation is, if you willingly attempt to depend on your strength against it, you've already failed."
I learned to think for myself, start developing my own opinions.
I learned just how strong Christ truly is, how much I really can depend on Him, just how much He really will help me, how much I truly need Him. I learned how wonderful a gift the Bible is.
A week and a half ago, we moved to Moscow, Idaho.
Who knows what Moscow will teach me. I'm already beginning to see and feel God's workings in this next, oh-so-critical phase of my life. I'm relying on Him more than I have ever before. I'm learning maturity, self control, fiscal responsibility, and so many other things that I've struggled with up until now. I'm learning to make my own directions and live on my own. Tomorrow, the sun will rise. And who knows what the tide will bring?
Today I turn nineteen.
In early April, we'll be moving into our new house. (Right now we're staying with my mother's parents while we wait for the previous owners to vacate.) I get my own studio apartment-esque room above the detached garage. We'll be plumbing it with a bathroom and kitchenette. It will be my own pad, and my first experience living (sort of) on my own, even though I'll just be a few yards away from my parents.
I had an interview with First Step Internet yesterday morning, and it looks very promising. I may just land myself a long term, full time job in the tech industry. They'd train me in the equivalent of a college degree in the area, so then it'd just be a matter of getting the certifications, which in the computer world, can be better than college degrees. I'm so ridiculously stoked about the prospect, I can't even tell you.
With extra money in the pocket, I'll acquire a larger budget for better filming, and I'll be able to afford web space to start a podcast. There's a billion people in the immediate area interested in film, so I'm in the perfect location for all of that as well.
Yes, no doubt about it. I'm on page 1 of chapter 4 in the book that is my life.
In the words of Chris Rice (from "Life Means So Much"),
"Every day is a journal page
Every man holds a quill and ink
There's plenty of room for writing in
All we do and believe and think
So will you compose a curse
Or will today bring the blessings?
Fill the page with rhyming verse
Or some random sketchings?"
Not a doubt in my mind.
I can feel it coming.
Like I feel the fall coming every September, I feel it coming.
I can smell it.
This will be a good year.
