A Letter to Myself

What I would tell myself as a halfway graduated high schooler four years ago:

Dear Kate,

This is you, four years in the future. You have no idea where you're going to be next fall and it's starting to freak you out. You just quit gymnastics and you are tired of high school. Your last year of track will be a bummer; you will cry, but you will also survive the nasty AP schedule you set up for yourself (though, if you decided not to take one of your exams, that would be fine too). You attend a college you absolutely love, and haven't even heard of yet. Isn't that amazing? It is a perfect fit. This year alone, you finally got to go to Africa, moved 5 times, lived with almost a half dozen amazing families in some capacity, and traveled through 12 states. In the past four years, you have learned to stop being afraid of saying/doing/liking the wrong things. Now you wear clothes you really like and aren't ashamed of the music you listen to. You still do nerdy things like read all your books before the semester even starts, but you're proud of that now, and for some bizarre reason people think you're funny. You are also still slated to be your best friend's maid of honor, despite the fact that you haven't seen each other in a year. You have an amazing gospel-centered church home, and you have grown tremendously in your walk with God. You are now the kind of girl who dances by herself in public, be it on an airplane, a bus, or  a run. You are embarrassed by this fact as you read it, but you will embrace it in your future. Although you have few close friends now, you hit the jackpot in college. You have the craziest, most incredible friends in the entire world - oh yes, did I mention you're a runner now? A cross country runner. Talk about crazy. People like you, but you still like to spend your weekend evenings reading or playing guitar. Yup, you play guitar, too. I don't think I would be able to list all the things you do now that you didn't before, because you have learned and grown so much. You became the person you wanted to be and it was a million times easier than you ever imagined. You stopped trying and just were. It will take you the next four years to realize all this, but you are pretty cool, and you have incredible people cheering for you. It's all worth it.

Love,
Your future self