Spoiler Alerts, But Not the Bad Kind

Ever read through old journal entries and thought, "Ha! Oh, younger self, if you could only see what would happen years into the future!" Yeah, me too. So here are a few imagined "spoiler alerts" for my own life. Maybe I'll print these out, put them in envelopes, and stick them in my journals, next to pertinent entries. A little perspective for my posterity. 


Dear 23-year-old Liz,
That talented man in that play you watch during the summer will one day become your husband.

Dear 21-year-old Liz,
Jordan and Heather will get married, and even though the journey to that union will have been crazy, their marriage will be the most beautiful thing in the world. They will move in to the same apartment complex as you and your new husband, and during the summers, the four of you will occasionally cross the parking lot for dinner or games. They will name their first daughter Kaitlynn Elisabeth. And parenthood will beautify both of them in ways you could never have imagined.

Dear 20-year-old Liz,
Also, Jesse and Kathleen will get married.

Dear 20-year-old Liz,
The curly-haired saxophone player in your FHE group at BYU-Idaho will cross your path dozens more times than you had anticipated. Nine years from now, you will stand next to him in the auditorium of the elementary school where you both work, and it will strike you as surreal that so much could happen in nine years, and that somehow, your lives still occasionally intersect.

Dear 19-year-old Liz,
That girl in your Acting I class that you are so intimidated by will become one of your dearest friends. You will write her letters during her mission, and more than eleven years later, you will still visit each other, still text, still talk on the phone for hours. She can still make you laugh more than almost any other woman you know, and her testimony will anchor you when you feel unmoored. Her children will delight and astonish you. (Also, you will almost fail your final for that Acting class, because she is your scene partner but instead of rehearsing, you will talk, and when it comes to your final performance, you will both forget your lines.)

Dear 14-year-old Liz,
By the time you are 30, you will have written over 200 poems, over 700 blog entries, one memoir of the time you sold vacuums door-to-door in California, and 2 novels. You will be a chronic journaler. But I think you might already somehow know that. I think you’ll sense, even when you're young, that writing will be a part of your life forever. And you'll be right.

Dear 12-year-old Liz,
Seventeen years after you make a scrapbook about the Princess Bride and write a fan letter to Cary Elwes, you will stand on set with that very man during a film shoot. You will not have a large role—you will play an extra in a party scene for a political candidate, played by the man you kept a signed photo of in your drawer, your first "celebrity crush." You will hold a table steady for him while he desperately writes out the changes to his lines that Rob Reiner gave him a moment ago, and afterwards, he will thank you, shake your hand, and ask your name. Later, between takes, he will ask the crowd why yawns are contagious, and you will explain mirror neurons, which he will think is a joke, but which you will insist is true. Before the final take, he will make eye contact with you as the cameras make final adjustments, and you will wink, and he will wink back. And you’ll smile and be cool even though on the inside, there will undeniably be a small part of you that’ll be all “CARY ELWES JUST F***ING WINKED AT ME!!!!”


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