If I could go back and tell my twenty-year old self just one thing, it would be this:  everything will work out.

That was the signature statement of one of my favorite church leaders, and I wish I’d understood it better as a young adult.  Everything will work out.  Believing that would have saved me so much heartache.  (Not to mention breakouts.)

I would tell myself to make a decision and then move forward with it, believing that the best is yet to come—because it is.  I would tell myself to do more and worry less.  I would tell myself that The Big Happy Ending comes slowly, slowly, oh-so-slowly…but it does come.  In bits and pieces, here and there, the long way around and through the back door.  It looks less like the End and more like the Middle and it sneaks up, rather than announcing itself, to you.  But you gotta stop folding the towels and filing the bills long enough to notice.

If I could go back, I would tell myself to trust myself.  I would tell myself to stop listening to what everyone else is doing or bragging about doing or pretending to be doing or thinks that I should be doing.  I would tell myself that what works out for them—even people I like, people I am like—is, quite certainly, not at all what will work out for me.

I would tell myself this at age twenty.  I would tell myself this at age 40.  I would tell myself this today, because it’s so simple and so hopeful that it’s still hard to believe:  everything will work out.

I think (I know) this means something different for each one of us.  I’m beginning to see what it means for me.

What does it mean for you?