Y2K to Today

In my last post from yesterday I asked for some ideas on topics and challenges and my dear friend, Sarah, challenged me to participate in what she is calling, "Y2K to Today." Basically, she is going to spend some time remembering the last ten years of her life and post about her "special, hard, boring, or breathtaking" moments. She is challenging her friends and readers to participate on their blogs and in return, they will have a chance to win some of her homemade sea salt. I think it is a great idea to sit back and view the last ten years of your life and to reflect on how much has changed and how much you have grown, whether you have a chance to win an amazing gift or not!

Yes, it's Christmas Eve and you might think there are much better things to be doing right now, but this is so much fun! We already had our family Christmas this morning and even though the house is a wreck, I am relaxing in my new fuzzy pajamas and socks while watching the Blindside (my newest favorite movie). Everyone knows that there is no hurry to clean up after the grand present opening, and if they don't know that, they should lighten up!

So, in the year 2000 I was a freshman in high school. I wore braces and had long frizzy hair which I always put up in a pony tail of some sort. I was very quiet and shy, only speaking to my friends Tia, Rachel, and Savannah. We had huge crushes on junior and senior boys who didn't know we even existed. We called them, "That Guy," "This Guy," and "Number 28" because we didn't know their names. I remember going to Senior High camp at Ross Point Camp that summer and being so excited to finally be one of those big kids! That was also the year that I counseled at camp for the first time and I discovered how much fun it was!

Another large event that sticks out in my mind is having a family friend living with us. She was young and used to babysit my brother and me when she was a teenager. She hadn't made the best life choices but having a 20-something woman in my house gave me someone to look up to. She was nice and liked to take me out and spoil me so of course I thought she was awesome! She took me ice skating, took me to a salon, and bought a ton of junk food for us to enjoy at home and I thought I was livin' the life! It turned out that the all the money she had been spending was my parents' money and she had no right to it. She had also been taking drugs and had a paranoia attack one night in my room. She made me think that someone was in the house and we were hiding. It was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life. When I found out the truth, I was crushed. I had been lied to, deceived, and tricked into spending my parents' money without their permission. I was heart broken. It did, however, teach me how to follow my gut (or rather the Holy Spirit's guidance) in deciding who to spend my time with. I knew all along she made poor choices and she wasn't the best role model, I just chose not to pay attention to those feelings. I learned a lot from that tough experience.

Besides for that, it was a relatively uneventful year and not much else sticks out. Whew, that was a long time ago and I feel so old!