Lessons From My Twenties: 3 Principles That Changed My Life
If you change your life for the better, would you do it?
Y’all, I’m in the last month of my twenties. This decade has been filled with some of the highest highs and lowest lows. In the last 10 years, I fell in love with Jesus, discovered my identity and purpose, was healed from depression and anxiety, saw God fulfill desires I didn’t know I had.
My 20-year-old self was unaware of her brokenness and uninterested in knowing God. My soon-to-be 30-year-old self knows that surrendering my life to Christ is the best decision I’ve ever made. I’ve learned so much about God, life, and myself, and I want to share it all with you. However, I don’t have that much time! So I’ve narrowed it down to three pieces of advice. I pray these three principles help and challenge you as much as they have me.
1. Learn to Endure Instead of Run
Endure -to bear without resistance or with patience; tolerate. To experience and bear something difficult, painful, or unpleasant:
If you can endure well then you’ll be able to handle pain, adversity, waiting, disappointment, and grief in a healthy way; a way that will eventually lead to healing instead of destruction.
In my early twenties, I developed a terrible habit of drinking wine after work to cope with the stress of my job. The alcohol wasn’t the problem, my dependence on it to give me peace was. It numbed the pain and stopped my tears for a little while, but it didn’t fix the problem. It was a temporary fill that left me empty every time.
Created things can’t fix our issues, heal our broken hearts, or give us lasting peace and comfort. Only Jesus can. When your situation feels like it’s too much to bear, learn to run to God and not to sex, food, people, work, or social media. Learn to feel your emotions without being controlled by them. Pour your heart out to God instead of taking your hurt out on people. God knows what you’re dealing with, but He can’t heal who you pretend to be or change what you refuse to surrender.
Be honest with Him and seek Him with your whole heart. In Christ we find peace, strength, and hope to help us endure whatever comes. Life doesn't get easier, but if you don't run from the pain and learn to endure the process, God will make you stronger.
2. Learn to Love Yourself
One of my greatest breakthroughs was being able to accept and love myself. I remember looking in the mirror and believing I was beautiful without make-up, hair extensions, or a flat stomach. It was about two years ago when I let go of the need to be understood and accepted by people (even my friends). I am who I am - goofy, blatantly honest, introverted, observational, and intellectual. I have an eclectic taste in music and adore theology books as much as fashion blogs.
People will always want to put you in a box and tell you who to be, but God didn’t create us to reflect the image of our friends, parents, or society. He created us in His image. We are all fearfully and wonderfully made (Psalm 139:14), and just as multifaceted as the God who made us.
Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
Genesis 1:26-27
Loving myself didn't happen overnight. It was (and still is) a process. We have to learn a new way to think before we can learn a new way to be. Yes, we all have areas of improvement we should pursue, but your worth is found in some future version of yourself. As you are right now God loves you. He created your personality with intentionality. Work on accepting yourself while you're a work-in-progress. If you can't accept and love yourself at your worst, it won't sustain when you're at your best. Your self-acceptance will be rooted in shallow things and crumble the moment you gain weight, are dumped, or don't get promoted.
If you struggle in this area, take time to identify how you view yourself, the characteristics you downplay, and the ones you embrace. Next, think about the reasons why. What you do is only the fruit of a deeper issue, a root cause. Bring those things to God and ask Him to help you love yourself.
3. Learn to Trust God, and Keep Trusting Him
And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.
Hebrews 11:6
In the last 10 years, I’ve taken huge leaps of faith and developed the trust to follow God into the unknown. Just last year I left my comfort zone and moved to a new city that I had no desire to live in. There were more moments when I was afraid, lonely, and utterly confused, but I stuck it out. I’ve learned that following God’s will is always worth it in the end.
How did I get there, trusting God completely? By learning His character. You won’t always understand His ways, but you can follow with confidence when you trust your leader. God is faithful, loving, and all-knowing. What He asks of use isn’t for our harm, but our good.
Five years ago God told me to become a member of a church that I didn’t think was a good fit for me. I had enough faith to be obedient but not enough to know if this would work out. Turns out I was wrong! God placed me exactly where I needed to be. I made incredible friends, got the opportunity to travel abroad for the first time in my life, received an offer for a new job through one of my friends (which led to an amazing career change), and discovered my purpose. If I would’ve trusted my feelings instead of God I would have missed out all of those blessings!
Don’t fear following a God who loves you enough to die for you. Fear missing out on the things He has in store - wonderful things you can’t yet imagine.