full circle.

It hit me the other day how much different of a person I am from the girl I was in high school.

I've "reunited" with classmates of mine on myspace, and while browsing their pages, it's easy to quickly compile a fairly impressive list of accomplishments. A large number of them have graduated from college, and some are pursuing Master's degrees. There are aspiring doctors and lawyers among them. Many have taken it upon themselves to do volunteer work in third-world areas. Clearly, it is a priority for many of them to be educated about other cultures, to identify needs greater than the often material, shallow things pursued by Westerners... and to do something about it.

I don't mention these things out of jealousy; actually, I'm proud that I went to school with a large number of civic-minded, motivated individuals. I guess what's striking to me is that I cannot include myself in their ranks, and had you asked my 17-year-old self, I would have said my primary goal was to achieve all those things and more. I grew up in a normal household with its normal problems, but always -problems or no problems- it was a home saturated in passionate emotion and intentional, unconditional love. When I reached high school and started contemplating my future, there was no doubt in my mind that someday I would get married and have a family of my own. Surprisingly though, given my own tight family unit, I never gave much thought to when and how this "future family" would come about.

Even after I became a Christian and the dynamics of all my relationships changed (including the ones I was yet to have), I just figured a husband and kids would drop into my path at the most convenient time, in between the tasks that one must tend to while saving the world. My dad told me once that when I was 4, I wanted to be 40... I spent my childhood rushing from thing to thing, striving for adult success even as a youngster. I loved my parents and my brother, but I was always straining to get away, to jump into the pool where everything was happening and all of it was huge and I was part of it.

I was 16 when I committed my life to Christ, started going to church, and began seriously trying to live my life as His servant. Since then, my inclination towards personal greatness has been problematic. For some, greatness is something God has planned for them. Unfortunately, whether God has it for me is something I've often neglected to prayerfully find the answer to. It's something, I decided many years ago, that I would demand and carve out whether it was meant to be or not.

Fast forward to the present and the realization that no, I am not so much that girl anymore. I used to daydream about being a Congresswoman or a military officer, of awards and accolades. I never thought about what my wedding dress would look like or how I'd raise my children. In three weeks, though, I'll be celebrating our third wedding anniversary with my hubby; that night, we'll tuck into bed our two darling boys, children whose faces I hadn't imagined until the day I found out they were each on their way. I spent so long struggling to put as much distance between myself and the tethers a home can create, to build my own life and pursue success, and yet here I am: passionately, intentionally choosing to immerse myself deeper and deeper into the magical, most important hub of Christian servanthood and blessing that is family. I sought to magnify myself in the greediest, worldliest sense, and now all I long for is to shrink, smaller and smaller, into a role notable only for the humility it demands.