27-year-old Caitlin Baird is not impressed with 12-year-old Caitlin Baird.
As I looked over the sparkly blue gel-penned words my heart sank; for the most part, my young thoughts were not directed toward school assignments or family fun or outdoor adventures.
My mind was stuck on boys. And popularity. And getting my way.
I was a Mean Girl.
The past few seasons of my life have been overflowing with goodness and grace and questions. Through college courses, miles on the trail, countless hours spent with campers, and long conversations with people near and far I have grown in my understanding of Who We Are As People. I am a woman who is seeking the Lord, connecting with family and friends, and encountering adventure in national parks and coffee shops. I desire justice in the world. Love without boundaries. Peace. Hope.
A lot of transformation has occurred in my mind, my body, my skill-set.
And yet there are parts of me that remain the same.
Just this past week my staff at North Fresno Church had the opportunity to look deeper into our group-wide strengths with Professor Trent and his knowledge of interpreting Strengthsfinder results. I had taken the quiz my sophomore year at FPU and was not surprised when my results came back as a duplicate these seven years later. What the test understands to be my strengths resonates well with who I am and what I can bring to the table. While I spent our training session focusing in on my teammates, I have since come back to this question:
If I feel I have changed significantly in the past seven years, should that be reflected by a shift in my strengths?
If I feel like there has been change in seven years, the feeling is even more amplified thinking back fifteen: I am not the same person I was as a sixth grader. Not even close.
The sixth grader who got in trouble on multiple occasions for talking (and laughing. LOUDLY.) in class. The same girl who focused on the cute boys in the crowd and in the process of hunting them down forgot her girl friends. That kid who spent her chores money on jewelry and nail polish and hair clips and Beanie Babies.
She wrote awful things about people in her journal. She used the word "idiot" to describe herself and "stupid" when her friends did something she didn't approve of. She plugged in Bible verses on the days she had no encounter with a cute boy or trip to the mall.
No, not her. I don't like that kid at all.
Don't put her in my cabin.
Don't ask me to intervene in her rants.
Don't expect me to talk to her when she has another thing to cry about.
Just don't.
But she has been put in my cabin. She has been put in my care.
I've found that girl crying on the sidelines of the game when she is out before her best friend.
She has spent hours talking about boys and makeup and how much she views herself as dumb.
We've walked for miles and she has nothing good to say about anything.
Sometimes she has blond hair and sometimes she has brown eyes.
Sometimes she is rail-thin and sometimes she wears uncomfortable shoes.
Sometimes she is a He and sometimes she is seventeen.
But every time that kid I want to stay away from finds me.
They need me. And I need them.
Because they are me. And I am them.
I can love the Mean Girls and Boys in this world and know they can look back in fifteen years and be thankful for the transformation that will take place in their own lives.
We can outgrow crushes: "I really love him." [Jan 23, 2000]
We can learn to love ourselves and others: "I hate that guy." [Jan 26, 2000]
We can accept our strengths: "I feel so lame not being able to do it." [Feb 18, 2000]
And We can learn to appreciate life: "I'm so proud of me!" [April 25, 2001]
Is that Mean Girl still a part of me? Is that, like my strengths, a core piece to who I am as creation?
I am glad my journal entries now reflect the thoughts of a woman who looks a little nicer, appreciates a little more, and loves a little better. She is able to take care of sixth graders with a greater depth than some other adults. After all, she was one of them.
"TGIF." [April 7, 2000]
