If I could tell my 20-year-old self one thing, it would be this:
You are not who they think you are.
I don’t mean that cruelly. The people around you love you as best they can. Your family sees a young man with a future. Your friends see someone intelligent and driven. The world sees someone who will build a career, marry, raise children, and eventually settle into a respectable life. In many ways, all of that will happen.
But beneath all of those expectations is a person you do not yet have the courage to meet.
At twenty, you’re already becoming an expert at survival. You learned that skill early. You learned it in a childhood where love often felt conditional and safety could disappear without warning. You learned it when trauma taught you that parts of yourself needed to remain hidden. You learned it every time you sensed that being accepted required becoming what others wanted rather than discovering who you actually were.
The problem is that survival skills make terrible life plans.
What I wish I could tell you is that authenticity is not something you will discover after you’ve completed all your responsibilities. It is not a reward waiting at the end of a successful career. It is not something God asks you to postpone until everyone else is comfortable.
The truth is that you already know more than you think you do.
You know there are parts of yourself you keep locked away. You know there are questions you refuse to ask. You know there are moments when you look in the mirror and feel disconnected from the person staring back. You don’t have language for all of it yet. You certainly don’t have the courage for it yet. But the truth is already there.
I wish I could tell you not to spend four decades running from it.
You will build a good life. You will marry a remarkable woman. You will raise children whom you love deeply. You will have grandchildren who will capture your heart in ways you cannot imagine. You will succeed in banking and investments. You will eventually leave that world behind and answer a call to ministry. You will become a pastor. You will preach thousands of sermons. You will sit beside hospital beds, conduct funerals, celebrate baptisms, and help people find hope when life has broken them.
And yet there will always be a quiet ache.
Not because any of those things are wrong. They are beautiful. They matter.
The ache comes from knowing that everyone knows the person you have presented to them while almost no one knows the person you really are.
The hardest part is that the longer you wait, the harder it becomes to imagine change.
Every year that passes becomes another reason to stay hidden.
You’re too young.
Then you’re too established.
Then you’re too successful.
Then you’re too important.
Then you’re too old.
The excuses evolve, but the fear remains the same.
I wish I could sit across from you and tell you that the fear is lying.
The people you love deserve to know the real you.
You deserve to know the real you.
And God already does.
That’s the part that will surprise you most.
You will spend years wondering whether God could possibly love the truth of who you are. You will read Scripture. You will pray. You will wrestle. You will bargain. You will try to make the pieces fit together.
What you will eventually discover is that God was never asking you to become someone else.
God was waiting patiently for you to stop hiding.
The God you preach about for years is the same God who will meet you in your own wilderness. Not with condemnation. Not with disappointment. Not with rejection.
With grace.
The same grace you’ve spent years offering other people.
The same grace you’ve told hurting people to trust.
The same grace you’ve struggled to believe could apply to you.
One day, in your late fifties, the walls you’ve spent a lifetime building will finally collapse. It will feel terrifying. You will wonder if everything is ending.
In a way, it is.
But something far more beautiful is beginning.
You will discover that authenticity costs something. Some relationships will change. Some people will leave. Some will never understand. There will be tears and grief and loneliness.
There will also be freedom.
For the first time in your life, you will stop measuring every word before you speak it. You will stop monitoring every gesture. You will stop carrying the exhausting burden of maintaining a version of yourself that was never entirely true.
You will finally breathe.
You will discover that peace is not the absence of conflict. Peace is the absence of pretending.
And perhaps most surprisingly, you will discover that becoming yourself does not destroy your faith. It deepens it.
The gospel will become larger.
Grace will become richer.
Compassion will become more real.
You will begin to understand why Jesus spent so much time with people who had been told they were unacceptable. You will finally understand what it feels like to be found.
So if I could tell my 20-year-old self one thing, it would not be about money or career or success.
It would not be about which investments to buy or which opportunities to pursue.
It would simply be this:
Stop abandoning yourself.
The world will reward you for conformity. It will applaud your ability to meet expectations. It will celebrate every role you successfully perform.
But none of that will bring peace.
Peace comes when your outer life finally matches your inner truth.
Peace comes when you stop asking who other people need you to be and start asking who God created you to be.
Peace comes when you realize that authenticity is not rebellion against God. It is cooperation with God’s creative work.
You will lose time. There is no way around that reality. I wish you had started this journey sooner. I wish you had trusted yourself sooner. I wish you had believed God loved you sooner.
I wish you had not waited until nearly sixty years old to become the person you had always been.
But I also know something you don’t know yet.
It is never too late.
The years ahead will contain grief, but they will also contain joy you cannot yet imagine. You will learn that living authentically is worth the cost. You will discover that being known is better than being admired. You will find that the truth, while frightening, is lighter to carry than any disguise.
And one day, when you finally look in the mirror and recognize the person staring back, you will understand that God was never asking you to become someone new.
God was inviting you to become yourself.
Leave a Reply