time travel

A few days ago, I received a message from my past self via FutureMe, and I must say, it was one of the coolest experiences ever. Here's what I wrote [with one omitted paragraph that I don't feel the need to share]:

Dear FutureMe,

This is past me. It's May 2007, and I am in the process of trying to recover from Graves' disease and the depression that has come along with it. I've just medically withdrawn from school and am about to move back home. I'm scared, and I feel like a failure. I just want to feel better and have everything go back to normal.

I hope that you feel better. I hope you learned something from all this illness and pain. I hope you kept fighting, kept going, kept praying, kept trying, and I hope it came to fruition. I hope you feel like the same passionate, creative, intelligent, loving, vibrant person you were before this illness took over. I hope you understand a little bit of why this happened. I hope you've learned something, gained something. I hope you're better. Stronger.

I hope you're doing something with your life again. You might have gone back to school in the fall of 2007, but I doubt it. Maybe you're getting ready to go back next fall. Maybe you just found out you got in. I hope you're excited. I hope you're refreshed and ready to get back to learning, which you love more than pretty much anything in the world. Or at least you did before Graves' disease. I hope you aren't letting anyone make you feel like you've wasted time, lost time, because of the time you spent at home. It was what you had to do, and you're strong for admitting you had to do it. I hope you aren't looking around at all the people whose lives were more perfect, more on track, more efficient. Screw them. They aren't you. You are still young, and you have plenty of time to get to where you're going. You'll get there, and you'll be awesome.

I hope you've allowed the Lord to work on you. I hope you've let him do big things, and I hope that even if everything isn't ok yet, that you know that it will be. Because it will be the way God planned it. Which is, by definition, amazing.

Love,
me

It's hard to put into words what it felt like to read that. I smiled, and I nodded a lot. Yes, I'm better. Yes, I kept fighting and got through it. Yes, I know that I did what I had to do. Yes, I know I'm not a failure. Yes, I know I'm strong. Yes, I feel like myself again. Yes, I'm doing something with my life again. Yes, I'm going back to school. Yes, I'm excited about learning again. Yes, I am alive...and ok... and happy. Yes, life is good.

"For no matter how many promises God has made, they are "yes" in Christ." (1 Corinthians 1:20)

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!

When I went to bed the night I got this message, I dreamed about time travel. Somehow, I ended up in the past, but I was still working at the crisis unit. A lot of our regular clients (frequent fliers, if you will) were there, but they were a lot younger. I wanted to tell them how good they looked, but I couldn't, because they didn't realize I was from the future, so it would make no sense for me to know what they would look like then. This made me very frustrated, and after a little while, I started to feel very uncomfortable about being in the past. I felt a little trapped, a little paralyzed. I needed to get out. I needed to move on.

And that's how I feel in my life right now. I feel anxious about getting out of here. Out of this place, out of this phase of my life. I feel as if my brain is already in Mississippi, and it's making it a little difficult to live in the present, to continue doing the things I have to do here. At this point, I have one thing to say to the future: BRING IT ON. :)