Dear Seventeen-year-old Self,

1. You don’t need to freak out about “God’s will for your life.” Do your best to ignore those who cause you to lose sleep over that. Just read 1 Thessalonians 4:3-7 and get on with it already. God’s will for your life is your sanctification. When you are sanctified you love God and love people and that’s all there is, really. You didn’t come across Frederick Buechner until far too late in life (24!), but hold on to this quote: “The place God calls you to is where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” Narrow in on that place and don’t compromise. That’s God’s will for your life. Picking a major in college, and picking a career, and finding a wife and everything else you’ll get bogged down doing should help you love God and love people in a way that is uniquely you; but it should never be what paralyzes you.

2. Don’t wait for those around you to do things, because maybe God has things for you to do that those around you cannot or will not ever do, or maybe they will only do them once you’ve taken that first step forward. And you don’t want to miss out, so don’t just wait to follow their lead. This goes for big things and small. Next year you’ll whimsically decide to become a DJ on the Millersville radio station. And after a couple semesters you’ll get really sick of it and will never want to be a DJ again, but that whimsical decision, like other decisions you’ve made and will go on to make, will be turning points. Put yourself in situations in which you experience new things. This will require initiative. You will travel. You’ll need to make a habit of talking to strangers. It will even eventually have you reading a lot of books (yes, I know you never read). It might not make sense. But it is necessary if you’re serious about finding your place in the world.

3. Satan is prowling. He really is. Don’t give him an inch.

4. God is all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving, and completely faithful. You’re in good hands.

4. You’ll wonder why you thought leaving high school was such a bad thing. Enjoy each day and love people. You’ll stay in touch with those you choose to stay in touch with, and losing track of people you only sort of knew is not the end of the world.

4.5. But while we’re at it… do you really want to skip your senior prom and instead go to a metal concert in a church gym??

5. Take the time to stop and stare. You live in a really big world and you have a lot to learn and laugh at and ponder and a lot to appreciate God for. Certain people will enter your life and will make that clear to you without even trying. I’ll spare you the details.

6. Don’t eat Taco Bell Express at the Houston Airport right before boarding the plane.

7. Right now you are numb. You’ll go to a couple of funerals next year for people you know. There will be tears and snotty tissues all around. You won’t cry, and that will bother you. You will eventually trace this at least in part to growing up where friends come and go and a coping mechanism is to refuse to allow anyone to get too close. Slowly you’ll learn to open yourself up to feeling things. Sure, it will hurt like hell sometimes, but it is good, and healthy, and you’ll never want to return to numbness.

8. There are some hard times ahead. Rather than trying to avoid painful times, search the Scriptures for the promises of God. You’ll need them when the storms come. If I told you about the hard times in detail you’d do everything you could to avoid them because you hate pain, but I think they are probably necessary, and you won’t do much good in a cave. On the other hand, there are some unspeakably wonderful times ahead too, and if I told you about them you’d try to orchestrate them and even if you could pull it off, it wouldn’t be the same, because one of the coolest things about God is that he dazzles his children all the time with unexpected infusions of grace and mercy and goodness and love. It’s really better if these things catch you off-guard.

9. I’ll finish with something else Buechner says, which is pretty good advice. Remember that one of life’s great mercies is that it’s not given us to know the might-have-been of things.

10. Oh, and come to terms with the fact that as long as you live, you’ll be building the airplane midflight.