A young girl lost.

She sits on the worn picnic table under the old oak tree at night and stares at the family home, she wonders when it all went wrong. Something she did a lot, to think and decompress from her day. It was getting chilly outside the cool night air was blowing on her skin. This home, looked like any other home. A little older, white aluminum siding on the bottom, brown wood siding on the top, like a big square Oreo missing it's bottom. It was home, but not for long. It held so much sadness. In her sixteen years of life she had already seen too much, known too much, and was afraid of what the future would hold. A future for most sixteen year old's that was to hold wonder, the wonder of what they would be, she already knew what she would be, nothing. Now she sits, smoking her cigarette, and wonders what will happen next. Where will her sisters go, will it ever be the same.

The now thirty-four year old women looks back on that sullen sixteen year old girl and says no, nothing will ever be the same, but you live, and you hold on, and you love, and you keep going. The hardest part is over, the pain, the fear, the uncertainty, it goes away, and new doors open, new experiences, and new struggles, but you get through them all, and you keep going. Your sisters have their struggles but they are OK, you wish you could be closer to them, but your life took a different path. A path full of regrets, of things you wish you could go back and change and undo, but you wouldn't be you without them.

I wish I could go back in time, hug that lost sixteen year old girl and tell her everything is going to be OK. I wish I could show her the life she has now, that house, the nightmares, they all go away. I wish I could guide her on her path, help her make decisions that would forever change her future. Remind her how special she is, and how God's plan for her is not yet complete. Life is massive when you are sixteen. Life is short when you are thirty-four. It moves faster, it seems murky, and it is influenced by much more. At sixteen life should be fun and amazing and full of hope, not fear.

So to my sisters I say I'm sorry, for not better guiding you through your paths, for not escaping with you as I dreamed so many nights that I would. To my sixteen year old self, we may not have done the things we thought we might have, but we have done all the things we never dreamed we would have and that past though still haunts us from time to time, it can never hurt us, or change us, or break us. We are strong, we are wise, and we will not be taken down. We ran away in the night, suitcase in hand, we started a new life, and we forgave as the Lord asked us to, just like we used to dream.