The best four years of your life

Hey kid,

This time of year always makes me think of you. Proms, summer breaks and graduations.

High school.

The best four years of your life, they claim.

Do it all. Do it right. Don’t mess it up. Get it figured out. Keep it together. Relax. Have fun. Smile pretty...No a real smile, not a fake smile.

I’m going to be real though.

The best four years of your life? Yea, that’s a load of crap.

Complete crap.

Now some parts of high school can be fun. Most people will look back and have some things they can smile about. You might be blessed to have a teacher or two that pour into you and a friend or two you keep for life.

But some parts of high school just suck. They are really hard. Whether you fit or you don’t, the pressure feels constant. There’s these expectations from everyone around you to live in the moment, focus on your future, be kind, be cool, be smart, be fun...

And you’re tired. Man, are you tired. Your body and brain need more sleep than our “do everything now” culture allows for and a constantly plugged in world means it feels impossible to catch a break.

Meanwhile adults around you keep telling you how easy you have it with their “wait ‘till you grow up and have real responsibility” threats.

Wait ‘till you grow up?

Yes, please. Wait.

Because it gets better. Oh Lord, it gets so much better.

You’re going to discover a big world full of people, places and things. Maybe you’ll stay home or maybe you won’t.

But either way, it’s so much better.

You’re going to find your people. Friends who love you and get you. You’re going to find your person. You’ll realize none of those things you thought mattered for forever love actually do and you’ll say “I do” to someone who feeds your soul.

You’re going to find yourself. Not who the world tells you to be, but who God made you to be.

You’re going to get the job. You’re going to make the move. You’ll buy the house, tear it apart and realize remodeling is not like they show on TV.

You’re going to stop making time for things that don’t matter and start making time for everything that does.

You’ll bring a baby or two into the mix and you’ll suddenly feel the weight of the world and the opportunity of it too.

You’re going to wake up one Sunday morning before the sun is up, all on your own because you can’t sleep in anymore, and realize you’re in a good spot. You’ll sip your coffee next to the person you’ve built a life with and you might think back to those “best four years of your life”.

But you probably won’t.

Because you’ll have lived so much after you left those lockers behind that you’ll struggle to remember much about it. They’ll be so many good things, hard things, fun things, important things between now and then that you won’t spend much energy reliving those glory days.

Hang in there kid. The pressure feels impossible right now but I promise, I promise, this isn’t it. This isn’t all there is. And this is not the best four years of your life.

The best times are still coming.