This is too auspicious not to share.
I’ve just arrived in Colorado for a little rest and restoration after a very busy term and packed start to the summer. It’s the same bedroom I grew up in since I was 4. The furniture has changed, I’ve changed as I’ve grown, but the view out the window has not. As I’m going through the mail that’s accumulated from the last time I was in the country, I find a letter from a dear friend (thanks Marsh) that is actually from me.
As a freshman Torrey cohort (shoutout to my Greg fam), we wrote letters to ourselves to be opened when we graduated. I remember so clearly sitting in the Sutherland courtyard with a group of wonderful people, some of whom became life-long friends, imagining what the next 4 years and beyond might hold. Life and Covid happened, so I opened it 4 years after the recipient was intended to read it. But, I happened to open it 8 years EXACTLY to the day I wrote it, according to the scrawled “8-21-2016” in the corner. I don’t know if 21 year old Sara wasn’t meant to read what 18 year old Sara wrote to her, but 26 year old Sara was unexpectedly blessed today.
Here’s the contents of the letter:
Dear Sara in 2020,
What up. I’m writing to you as a freshman, about to end Torrientation and in the middle of SOS Welcome Week. It’s been a roller coaster of emotions, obviously. Right now, I feel excited about the future but also pretty nervous. When I think about all the expectations and assignments and papers and reading ahead of me, it’s incredibly intimidating, like looking at a cliff I am expected to scale. I can’t see very many footholds, and most of the cliff is obscured by fog. You have reached the top, though. By God’s faithfulness, you have persevered, and you have kept climbing. Hopefully there were plenty of beautiful points along the way that made it all worth it, an outcrop that you can sit on and rest and look how far you’ve come, gaining strength to keep climbing.
God’s been teaching me a lot about his faithfulness this week. He came before me to make a place specifically for me at Biola. He did not leave me to figure it out on my own, but he walked with me all the way from Colorado. I see his promises in the Word and watch every one of them fulfilled. I hope you did not forget this part of God and thanked him constantly for it.
We are both at the beginning and end of journeys. I have reached the end of my childhood and ready to start college and life as an adult. You are end at the formative college years and hopefully ready to start the rest of your life. I can’t wait to see what that looks like and enjoy the journey there. Don’t let me down.
Love,
Your 2016 self
Despite forgetting how to grammar a little bit in the last paragraph and the nervousness about writing a progressively longer Torrey paper every semester (I was so stressed, poor little perfectionist), I clearly wrote with words painted by hope for all the future would hold.
Well 2016 self, I hope I didn’t let you down. Life didn’t exactly go how you thought it would, but I did keep climbing. I’m still climbing further up and further in, because graduating Biola was not the end, not even close. Sometimes I lost hold of the faithful promises of God you clung to, but he always found me and held me tighter. The view from higher up on the cliff is more beautiful than you could ever imagine.
Love, your 2024 self
Hopeful Wanderer 