I woke up to this birthday poster from my roommates. They knew that my mom used to make my brother and I birthday posters, too. Then Jessi chopped up a chocolate bar to make special chocolate chip pancakes! (You can't get chocolate chips here.) Taylor and Mike came over and we all ate breakfast together. I love my team!
I am SO thankful for this team that treated me like a Queen and spoiled me on my birthday. We spent the afternoon at a bookstore and found some delicious teriyaki noodles - score! The barista's from Anderson's, the coffee shop on the corner by my apartment, coordinated with my co-leader, Taylor, and surprised me with cake and balloons... after I berated Taylor with questions as to WHY he needed coffee at 9:00 at night. The team also worked hard to throw a surprise party of their own -- and I was actually surprised! The girls made pumpkin pie and pumpkin bread and delicious hot apple cider. They all chipped in and bought me a RUDN (our University) sweatshirt and even found some hazelnut syrup for my coffee! All of my friends at the party shared a memory and something they admire about me. It was so sweet to my soul to hear those words and receive encouragement from people who have become my Moscow family.
..........
I already felt "behind" on simply processing everything new and exciting and big and hard in my life right now... then you throw turning another year older in the mix. (I'm realizing that things never stop getting thrown into the mix. There's always something!) This isn't a milestone birthday or anything, but it is strange to think that I'm no longer in my early twenties. Something about breaking the twenty-five year mark and moving into my late twenties is just kind of weird.
According to the timeline I created somewhere between middle and high school, it seemed clear to me that by twenty-three I would have graduated from college and jumped into marriage then start having kids by twenty-five. My thirteen year old self thought I had it all figured out. That is, until I turned twenty-three and was not close to graduating OR getting married.
Little did I know that I would find myself taking a year off to do a leadership internship in Texas and then stay there for three years. Or that I would end up at Boise State University and study Communication and English. I had a lot of other things to preoccupy myself with during college anyways. I was busy working at Teen Mania Ministries in Texas, starting classes at Tyler Junior College, moving to Idaho, transferring to Boise State, and getting involved with, then joining staff with Cru at BSU. I lived in a different house nearly every year since high school, was a nanny for the same family for four years, traveled to Panama two summers in a row, and two months ago I moved to Russia. I am blown away when I think about everything that has happened in the last seven years!
While it seemed like marriage was the obvious next step after I obviously would only take four years to graduate from college, I can't imagine anything different from this adventure I have been on. I've seen, learned, and experienced much more than I ever anticipated for my whole life, never mind just now in the beginning. It's so strange to think that if my life went the way I thought it should, I'd be married with kids right now. But I wouldn't have had all of the incredible experiences God has brought me through and I wouldn't have grown in the same ways I'm growing right now.
I'm just reminded after my birthday last week that life rarely turns out the way we think it will, and that is a very GOOD thing. I'm so grateful that God is sovereign over my life decisions and even when I am confused or lost, He knows exactly what's going on and what's to come. I can rest in this confidence that He guides me into all truth and this truth brings freedom.
