Ready for A Reunion?

Recently I got the news and invite to my 10 year high school reunion. Lots of emotions came with that. Excitement, disbelief, nervousness, all followed by some good reflection. I lay in bed that night comparing where am I now with where I thought I'd be, wondering if I am excited to reunite with my high school classmates, and if I'm able to own the journey I've been on.

I was so ready to graduate high school- to move on to bigger and better, that next step everyone kept talking about, and to take my first leap into adulthood. I was going to school across the country from the majority of my classmates and Facebook was still a new thing (I didn't get an account until I arrived at college my first semester), so it was mostly a solo journey into the unknown. I had all these expectations, goals, and plans for myself and for what I wanted in my life. Now I can look back and lovingly recognize how rigid those were for me. As if success in a certain area made me a successful individual, either all or nothing. Some of this reflection prompted me to write a letter to myself at 17, which you can read soon, but I want to finish answering the question. Am I ready for the reunion?

After a sleepless night, I came to the conclusion that, yes I am. I started envisioning how the reunion was going to play out. You know, maybe a slide show of graduates and a list of their accomplishments, current careers, etc, and I wondered what I would put on that slide. My educational path was/is not a straightforward one, I've found myself found myself working in several fields developing a host of talents and abilities while deciding which ones I wanted to focus on cultivating, and I've moved from place to place over the last ten years. I have dealt with serious health challenges and fought my way out of hopelessness. One of the best things I have ever done, though I never planned to, was to put life on hold to serve an eighteen month mission for my church. Through that experience I made some incredible friends, fell in love with the Spanish language and Hispanic people, and altered the course of my life. I have learned surprising skills and created my own business, only to put that on the back burner to work on something else I'm passionate about in the hopes of combining them in the future. I am learning to take risks and trust myself. I have written a book, but I'm still in the process of publishing. In short, my life is in progress; I am not a final product yet, and THAT'S OK. I discovered that instead of this stock photo future that I had desired, the reality is closer to a mosaic- perhaps incoherent or abstract when looking at just one piece, but incredibly beautiful and breathtaking in it's entirety. I have learned life lessons that I did not even know needed to be experienced. I am still learning to enjoy the journey and the moment and each individual stage of life. I have been brutally broken and put myself back together a few times now. I did the work to get rid of baggage and connect with myself, to heal myself and share healing with others. I have lost people I love and gained new friendships. With each new day and experience I am learning to love a little more, a little stronger, a little deeper. And I am really proud of that.

I know as I go to my reunion that some of my friends are in graduate programs, medical residencies, PhD programs, established in a career for several years now, have multiple children (while I still prepare for mine), etc. Simply, our paths divulged in the woods and they were all the ones we each needed to take. And I will celebrate every single one of them. Though despite my lack of conventional measures of success, I will go with my head held high because I am in love with WHO I've become and where I am, not just what.