Leaving my legacy

I have four more weeks left in the home town I've lived in for the past 15 years.

15 years is a long time. A girl goes from a preschooler to a graduate in 15 years. A family is made in 15 years. Friendships are built, broken, and reconciled in 15 years. Change happens in 15 years. People get to know you in 15 years. Legacies are built in 15 years.

So what's mine?

Mine is with teachers. Mine is with a church. Mine is with adults who's kids I've babysat and led at VBS. Mine is with the kids who I have babysat and taught at VBS. Mine is with the workers at certain restaurants that I go to a lot. Mine is with that one worker at Kroger who knows me because I buy really random things and that I'm 19 going on 14 years old. Mine is with my eighth grade English teacher who still has the terrible "novel" I wrote. Mine is with the church leader who still remembers the Linley with glasses and braces. Mine is that my teachers in my earlier years remember me as the quiet girl with her nose in a book...constantly.

But those don't matter in the great scheme of things. Who cares if my fourth grade teacher fondly remembers my obsessive reading of "The Boxcar Children" or that the Kroger employee will forever think it's strange that I buy onions and a box of brownie mix in the same purchase? Things like that are irrelevant to what I really want to leave home.

I want to leave with a legacy that forever honors my Savior. I want people to think of me as the girl who invests time in others with little regard to what she needs to be doing for herself. I want people to think of me as the one who cared too much for what others needed. I would rather care too much than too little. I want girls who are insecure to look at me and know that if the dorkiest girl on earth can make it through middle school and high school, they can too. If one girl keeps her head up in a rough time because of looking at me, I've succeeded in doing what I've been called (by name) to do. If anyone is a follower of Christ because of me, if anyone steps away from their insecurities and fears because of me, and if anyone is a leader because of me, then I have done what I was here to do.

My legacy is what people will think of whenever they hear my name. I know not all of it will be good; I'm far from perfect and know my faults. But negativity and the downward cast of an eye will not keep me from stumbling along the path that I've been set on to follow. And I will stumble. Not everything is a stroll in the park. I'm going to have backbreaking spaces that I'll need to grab ahold of God's hand for and adversity is one of those spaces. But there will also be times where I'm skipping along the road, freer than any bird you've ever seen.

I'm leaving soon. But think of me every once in a while and don't miss me too much. I've left behind a little bit of Linley here and there. And, hopefully, it won't be hard to find.