Ironically, just yesterday my mom swung by my house. She and my dad have been cleaning out their house and attic, sorting through old things, and throwing away old junk. Buried deep in the attic, my mom came across a few boxes from my high school era. Being my wonderful mom, she figured that past memories could inspire some good creativity, so she promptly left the boxes on my front porch. Nothing beats coming home to find a box inscribed with your 16-year-old boyfriend’s name, and the contents of high school youth spilling down the porch stairs.

So, as I grapple with what Jesus and God want me to tell these kids, I have been doing my homework by walking through memory lane of my own high school experiences.

Puppy Love.

The first box that my mom left on my porch was a complete time capsule from my first Puppy Love. I had dated a very sweet boy my sophomore year of high school. We met in Language Arts class. He asked me to the Homecoming dance in a poem that he’d put on my desk (which I found in the box). We went to the dance. We had an amazing time. We started dating. We fell in love. It was glorious. He was sweet, and wrote me notes and poems. He would write me pages and pages about how he adored me, and wanted us to be together forever. We dated for almost 9 months, which is just about an eternity at 16 years old. At the end of the school year, I went on a trip to Hawaii with my school’s science program. It felt like the longest trip in the entire world. The distance started to get between us. When I got home, he’d made more friends and begun branching out. We started to grow apart. Painfully, it was time. We decided to go our separate ways. I was crushed. I had my first experience of realizing why they say you’re falling in love. Because when you’re done falling, you smack the ground – HARD.

I was inconsolable. The first day my dad went around my room and collected all of the remnants that were associated with my heart-throb. He placed them one by one in a box: pictures, letters, photos, frames, stuffed animals, anything that would make me think of this boy.  He then put the box in the attic. There it rested for almost TEN years. Until yesterday, when my mom delivered it oh-so-timely to my front door.

I have to admit, as I have long since healed and moved on, it was really cute to dig through the box of treasures. There were letters explaining things I had completely forgotten about, pictures of us as little pip-squeek babies, and pressed flowers. I couldn’t stop smiling. And not because I’m in any way connected or thinking about him. Come on, it’s been ten years. And also I’m pretty sure he’s engaged – or at least that’s what I’ve gathered through Facebook stalking (I mean, if we’re friends on FB it doesn’t really count as stalking…right!?).

I realized that this relationship was a perfect dipiction of Puppy Love because it was entirely evident of how innocent we were; untainted and unjaded. It was simple. He was nuts about me and told me all the time. He just wanted to stay with me for a 16-year-old version of forever. I was nuts about him too. And that was all there was. We had cute kisses, innocent hearts, and were totally unaware of the heartache that would follow in the wake of young love.

If I’m aloud to give a shameless plug to HNB, my current boyfriend-extrodinaire, digging through that box made me think about him quite a bit. Even though I’m 25 and he’s almost 29, somehow we have that same innocent feel. HNB is really simple. He just likes me. I just like him back. It’s easy and fun. And I’m not going to get too mushy on the internet, but it felt good to know even after all of the DBs that are out there, and crap that I’ve sifted through, innocent love is still real and a possibility – like the kind I had at 16.

I think if I was to go back to Jenni the 16 year old, I would tell her to keep dating guys like Puppy Love. Because in between Puppy Love and HNB, there were a couple of rough relationships. Although things turned out ok, I could have saved myself a lot of heartache if I would have taken good notes from Puppy Love, and tried to stick with sweet innocent love like the kind I had at 16.

Perfection and Anorexia.

The other box that my mom left at my house was a filing box that I started keeping when I was a little girl. I think I’ve always been somewhat neurotic, because I started filing at the age of 9 or so. My dad bought me the box, and each year I could collect pieces of artwork, Language Arts writing pieces, or pictures of friends that were important that year. I kept filing all the way through college. So, needless to say that when I found this box on my porch, it was more than a trip down memory lane, it was a complete history of Jenni from a little baby scooting on the carpet, all the way through sorority pictures in college.

The one thing that stood out to me about who I was back them was simply a feeling of being exhausted all the time. That and that I was totally skinny.

See, I was musical and athletic. I was on the band and the swim team. I was taking tons of classes. I got all As. I wanted to be popular, but wasn’t really. But I tried really hard to have lots of friends, and keep the peace with all of my friends (which can be hard when you’re actually a loud mouth dramatic 16 year old). And through all of that, I didn’t really believe that eating was mandatory. So, at the tender age of 17, I barely tipped the scales at 95 lbs. Which, as shown in my filed photos, I looked like I was 13. (NOTE HERE- High school girls: being a 13-year-old-looking pile of bones = SO not cute. Don’t buy the hype. Eat dinner).

Scrolling through the pictures, and through the work I did, I couldn’t help but feel the exhaustion coming back to me. It was like I spent my entire years through high school striving. I’m not sure if that was just the pressures of school, or of my friends, or of my home life, but I know I’m much more relaxed now. Not everything is so black and white. I enjoy life a lot more. I eat dinner a lot more.

I wish I could have gone back and told the high school me that it was ok to be less than everything. To relax. To have fun. I would tell 16-year-old-Jenni to quit trying so hard, because she’d wake up at 25 and still be a hot mess. I’d tell her to get over the hype of being perfect and skinny and just start getting used to choas and not looking like a model.  I’d tell her to quit trying to be so good. Not to say that being good doesn’t get you anywhere – it’s just that I know now that it’s  not a guarantee. Crappy things will still happen, and you still have to live in and grow.

My advice to 16 year old Jenni? Grow hard. Laugh a lot more than you do. Forget about trying to be everything. And I know this sounds cliche, but go after what you love. Who cares if you don’t know what that is right now. But just take a deep breath and let go. The pressure of being perfect isn’t as important as you think.

Message to the kids?

I don’t know if the 16 year old Jenni would have had the mind to understand all of that. I don’t know if just telling a kid, “Don’t worry, relax, life will work out” really means anything to them. Moreover, I don’t know if my memory lane road trip is going to mean anything to these high school kids next weekend. I don’t know if my youth of Brittney Spears and boy band hits even connects to high schoolers who grew up on iPhones and Facebook. I don’t know if they are going to look at me and think that I am outdated and lame. That my stories are unbiblical. That I can’t quote enough scripture or have enough reliability to the bible to be a real speaker.

Although it was good to see how I have grown away from 16 year old Jenni, it would be nice if I had at least a topic or direction for this camp next week. If you have any brilliant ideas, feel free to help a sister out.

You see, this guy that I had been with, I thought he was brave. I thought he was adventurous. I thought he was the greatest adventurer that I had ever known. And in response, I became brave and brazen, and an adventurer. I knew to keep up with this guy, I needed to be a woman who could handle the end of the earth and more.

But then, something happened. It turns out we weren’t in the story I thought we were. No rings would be exchanged, and we wouldn’t have the ending I wanted at that time. The story as I knew it needed me to be brave in a different way than I had imagined. 

But something I learned didn’t go away after the idea of the wedding had passed. The bravery didn’t leave. The brazen woman that I had learned to become didn’t go away. I couldn’t turn off the idea that I was going to be adventurous.

This leads me to a movie. Right, I know. Most people don’t think of their life stories in turns of Disney Movies. Or, if they do, you tend to think that they are pathetic people. But I remember, back in the time when I was thinking that I was going to get married, there was a particular movie that really displayed the kind of woman that I had decided to become.

I had just gone to the midnight showing of The Pirates of the Caribbean, At World’s End.  There was a scene in the movie that literally made me tear with ambition. I remember driving home from the theatre and making an international call. I had been so inspired from the image of bravery and womanhood that I had witnessed, that I felt like an international call was in order, even though it was expensive. I had caught him late at night, but he was willing to listen to my thoughts.

The scene I am talking about is below:

The thing that got me about this clip back then was the idea that the girl wasn’t waiting to be saved. If you notice, she was just as up and prompt with her sword as he was. He would lean on her and hold her for support as he reached to fight his own battles, needing her as much as anything. And like wise, she wasn’t wearing a dress – she wasn’t waiting in distress, she wasn’t literally needing to be saved. Instead she had her own weapon. She knew how to fight. She was just as much apart of the romance and drama as he was.

The funny thing  about that particular relationship is that it didn’t work out. I learned how to be brave, and yet, I’m not married. Which, if you ask me is just fine. But I did learn something that lasted me much longer than the relationship. I learned how to be an Elizabeth Swan. To be brazen. To have my own sword. To take off the dress and engage in the fight of life. To hold my man with as much support and strength as I could muster, knowing that the fight and the adventure were my part as much as they are his.

So, in light of the pirate ways, I toast to Elizabeth Swan. Cheers to the woman who inspired me to be a real woman long before I needed to be one. A woman who showed me feminine strength even before I knew what I was going to be strong for. Women, we are needed with spines of steel -  but yet spines of steel clothed in flesh and softness.

Let us not forget that. In the stories of adventure, we have a key role to play out. Yet, we have to brave and graceful. Not simply brave alone – but brave and beautiful…even while holding a sword and wearing pirate pants.