Happy June! My birthday was yesterday, and I am now officially twenty-three. Let’s just say that twenty-two just wasn’t what Taylor Swift made it out to be. I made a post about my year lost to lyme and mono and I meant it in the most literal way possible. I don’t feel like I was ever really twenty-two. The entire year was lost to pain and I didn’t really move from the couch. I feel like I’m behind now, because I know that if I hadn’t of gotten sick I would be so much farther ahead. I know that I’m not, there are a lot of twenty-three year old’s still trying to figure it out, I just thought by now I’d be farther along.

So when I say I want twenty-three to be a better year for me I’m not setting the bar crazy high, in fact the bar is rather low. I know life moves in phases and no matter what we think those phases aren’t marked in years or semesters. They’re random. God and the forces on this earth aren’t really working with our calendar. So, I don’t expect it to get better right away, but I hope that this age is more giving. I hope that it has a little more mercy.

That’s not to say that twenty-two didn’t come with some valuable lessons. Here is what I learned while I was too sick to get off the couch. 

• Our bodies are truly amazing and we take them for granted all the time. We can say we’re thankful for our health as much as we want, but I don’t think we really understand it until we’ve had that health completely robbed from us. It’s like when you can’t breath through your nose with a head cold and you all you can think about is how you never realized what a blessing it is you normally can. The amount of stuff our bodies can do on the daily is amazing. So here is your reminder to treat yours right and be thankful for it.
• Family and good friends carry you when you can’t carry yourself. I’ve had points in my life when I didn’t have that many friends, or at least, not good ones. So this year has been a beautiful reminder that even though everything else seemed to go to hell, the people I’m surrounded by are amazing, and I owe them a lot more than I give them. As I get well, it’s time for me to become a better friend and family member.
• I have more to give then I’ve been giving. Going off that, I’ve realized that I’m not the most charitable when it comes to my community. I’m normally a good friend (though as I said my friends deserve the world) and I’ve done some amazing things for people in the past, but I don’t make a point of it to do it regularly. One of my really close friends was talking about charity work and how she missed it. I started thinking about actual charity work and how what I’ve been calling charity has been random and sporadic. I’m going to try to enroll in some kind of program to become a mentor, because I not only love kids, but I feel like it’s where I can do the most good having been through a lot during those years.
• God works in mysterious ways. I’ve found him a lot during this period of illness. I think our souls always have a way of clinging to the good in desperate time and He uses them to lead us to Him. If you’re struggling with faith when it comes to times of darkness I just want to leave this little link for you to a C.S Lewis book that blew my mind.
• Our personality needs sharpening sometimes. As I’ve been sick I’ve been reading and writing and trying to untangle my ideas on certain topics but also on myself. Why do I believe certain things? Why do I crave a certain kind of life? Let me tell ya, when you’re sick on a couch for a solid twelve months you have time to dive into those questions. I made a list of some of them on here before but I’ve far surpassed them in my twenty second year. I’ve asked myself a lot of questions and thankfully I’ve answered a lot of them (though there will always be more.)

See, the year wasn’t completely lost!