“Not too late”… three really powerful words that I find very comforting. I think I’ve thought this about many different things throughout my life. That it was maybe too late to be something I wanted to be. Too late to follow a wild dream. Too late to salvage a broken friendship. Too late to take back words spoken in self-righteous anger. Too late to change self-destructive patterns. Too late to apologize… too late to forgive… too late to change.
It seems like no matter how many times you fail at something, no matter how many times you show up too late for the game, no matter how many times you refuse to see outside of your narrow scope… there is always someone there waiting to make room for your mistakes… to help you learn from them, to watch you grow through them.
As soon as you believe your fate is decided, it is. It’s never too late to believe in the power of hope. One memory I have that really illustrates this feeling is the night of my first car wreck at 16 years old. I was jamming out to my tunes in the old maroon taurus, obviously wasn’t looking around me, and made a left turn into a big black truck while pulling out of the parking lot at Watergardens Movie Theatre (my high school job)… completely totaling the other car. I remember crawling into bed that night and just sobbing because I felt (in my obvious teenage wisdom) like the sky had fallen and nothing would ever be the same. Dad came into my room and I of course expected him to yell at me and tell me how much it was going to cost to get a new car, how much our insurance was going to go up, how I never should have gotten my license in the first place… but he just picked me up and held me. For a good while, too. A feeling of comfort washed away all those feelings of regret and anger and I just sat there and cried. He said, the world isn’t over Val. This is just one obstacle in your way and it’ll soon be over. It’s not too late to fix.
I look back and laugh at my many ridiculous mistakes from time to time, and even if I don’t want to my family will go back and remind me of them at family dinners… and I think – what if I had given up then? What if I had turned around? What if I hadn’t showed up? What if I had stayed angry forever? What if I had been too lazy to care? A lot of things wouldn’t have happened. Self-defeat is the worst thing we can give into because once we give up, no one else is going to keep trying for us. We have to make the initial spark, we have to nurture the growth with hard work, and we have to have the hope that someday we can be what we always wanted to be. It’s a possibility that takes a lifetime of realizing over and over again… until we keep rejecting defeat and taking the long and sometimes lonely road that leads us to where we want to be.
Everyday when I drive to work through downtown Phoenix I look around and almost forget where I am and how I got here. It’s a beautiful thing that I can see the signs everyday of my choice to explore the meaning of this life and this experience I have been given. I think for a good while I was just happy to accept whatever came my way. Ever since I decided to venture out into a new corner of the world I am finding myself falling in love with the realization that it’s never too late to try something I once thought could never be. I used to tell myself over and over again that I disliked certain foods, activities, people, ways of doing things… but the more I try the things I thought I didn’t like, the more I am finding they are the things I’ve wanted all along. I am excited to just keep moving along… day to day… all the while discovering new people, new places, new feelings that just catch me by surprise.
Erica, congratulations again on graduation tomorrow! Your announcement came in the mail today and I am blown away by your beauty, your talent, your maturity, your love. I am so proud to call you my sister.
Andrea is coming to visit tomorrow morning! I am so excited to spend the weekend with someone I care about so much. It’s wild to look back on the years and see how far we’ve come, how much we’ve been through together, and how much further we can go as family members and friends. I really am grateful right now for so many amazing people that color my life. I hardly feel deserving.
