18.

Eighteen days.
Eighteen years.
Of what?
Of life.
Unscripted, immeasurable, inspired life.
Happening in ways that other lives happen:
With mistakes, regrets, tragedies, riddled with hardships and confusion.
With joys and kindness and indulgence in all that is good in sight, feel and touch.
Injected with curiosity and laced with adventure, life will have happened for 18 years for me in 18 days.

How do you sum up all your experiences with one word:
Grace.
Not only does this word embody that which I’m gifted each day from my heavenly Father but it also remains a place marker for what I aspire to become. Graceful. Elegant and beautiful in form as Google defines. Patient, kind and even-tempered as I saw it. Everything I’ve yet to achieve; my mind stumbles over self-built obstacles oppressing me from ever reaching such a level of love.
To have grace is something to be desired, I believe, by not only consciously awkward teenaged girls, but all forms of creatures. The eagle longs to be graceful in the air as the fish seeks grace in the sea. A mother lion finds grace in preying upon animals for food to feed her young and the mountain employs it by never bowing to the wind. 
Grace.
Wonderful and evident in everything we experience. Almost as divine as love, perhaps on another level. I have hopes to one day grasp it, and keep it in a jar where I can watch over and nurture it, claiming it as my own and summoning it whenever I wished. Is it wrong to want to hold onto something so perfect?
But what can we define as perfect.
Even things such as grace require fault in order to be recognized as something glorious. How do you identify progress without adversity?
For 18 years, adversities such as emigrating, culture shock, strictly dysfunctional parents, and war shaped me, in the same way a florist shapes a bouquet. Or fertilizer (this seems much more fitting). But these challenges, though broad to the ear are nothing new to the average weathered life. 

Why is it that my words only ever capture my mind in writing? Speech does me no justice and neither does thinking. They rush out like half boiled eggs, oozing out and annoying all it comes into contact with. Am I the only one?

At 18, I won’t hope for great things to happen, not due to pessimism but because great is a matter of perspective. What’s great to me now may not seem so great to me in a month or so. What will happen will happen and I can only hope and pray that the result of this year will be pleasing to my Maker. If I look back at this day when I’m 19 days from 19 and haven’t moved an inch in life, now that’s something I plan to avoid.

What worries me the most is the path I’ll be creating for myself. No longer is my fate in the hands of overseers such as my parents or teachers or mentors. I’m my sole proprietor and God is my witness. But oh how I’ll lean on Him with my entire being slouched in surrender at His feet with earnest desire for Him to share his plans with me. My longing has been and is to fulfill His will. And it shall be until the day I die. I may follow detours and take illegitimate turns, following Adam’s curiosity for all things unknown but I have faith that He will continue to lead me towards His light and path.

I’m 17 and smart is an adjective far above my league of intelligence. Don’t let my limericks and prose sway you to think any different. I’ve grown so poor in my academics that pursuing a higher education is questionable at times. In my current mind’s eye, I’m experiencing such a great sorrow at my lack of knowledge during my first semester of college that it feels as if Depression is in town visiting neighbors that are two hearts over and having tea with them, knocking my little organ out of it’s usual orbit.
I’m 17 and I’m laying here, thoroughly perplexed as to where I’ll be in two months. What I want to be doing and how I’ll be going about it. One thing is for sure: I haven’t an ounce of affection towards my current situation now. This school, this feeling, this life. It’s not comfortable or aligned. I feel like a disproportionate wheel. It may look right from the outside until you get in and start driving and discover that it’s actually a bit lop-sided. 
-sigh-