5 reasons (NOT) to attend your high school reunion

I have spent the past year working with a team of classmates planning our high school reunion.  But as reality sets in, exhaustion  takes toll,  and the date approaches, I have become overwhelmed with anxiety. I was tempted to think about all the excuses I could make NOT to show up.  Never mind the fact that I've promised to host 150 of the coolest classmates and spouses on the planet, or spent a ludicrous amount of money on stupid orange shoes that hurt my feet. I am still dreading the whole emotional roller coaster of it all.  Why? I LOVED high school!   I can offer you a plethora of excuses, but in an effort to remain transparent , I'll just give you the lame shallow ones that ran through my mind.

1. Nobody is going to remember me anyway, I won't be missed.  I guess I'll just kick rocks and die.
There is nothing like a good wallow in self-pity right? The reality is that everybody remembers somebody from high school. Truth is, none of us had anything to offer anyway. It was just the starting point of our journey into the abyss of adulthood. We were all a bunch of out of whack hormones looking for ourselves with blindfolds on.  We all had raw ambition, talent, and personalities that were molded only by our (parents') beliefs and surroundings ~ the purest form of our Earthly existence.  We wanted to change the world.  Ahhhh....good times. It's only AFTER we got our degrees, titles and money did we become such losers.

2.  I didn't live up to the expectations of my senior superlative. (Ha! Talk about shallow)  I was the student council president, founder of the African American Awareness club and voted Most Outstanding AND Best All Around by both the students and faculty. I mean really?  Who does that?  Should I have moved to Hollywood or been on Broadway?  in Forbes?  Why don't people recognize ME by MY first name? Even when I tell them my name, I still have to follow up with "I'm James' wife" or "Doc's mom" only to get a vague okaaaay response.  In reality?  I ROCK being a wife and mom. I don't have to dress up, my shoes are always comfortable, and my hair never suffers from heat damage.  Heck, I can even exfoliate while writing my blog!  Top that Miss Most Likely to Succeed! "Most Outstanding" is in the house!!  (literally)

3.  EX issues.  This really doesn't pertain to me, because I had man drama my ENTIRE high school career.  The only guy I was seen with at dances and such is now in prison doing time for armed robbery. See?  Drama. But I'm told that some people are dying to see whether or not they traded up or down. Hmmm....I think I'll keep tab.

4.  My clique won't be there.  Everybody knows that in high school, you wouldn't be CAUGHT DEAD with "certain" people.  The funny thing is, since everybody had a clique, we were ALL certain people.  I hung with the cool black girl clique.  We had AP classes with the nerds, dated the jocks, were cool with the band geeks, wore black on goth day, and could "valley girl" shrill as good as the plastics.  We had all the basis covered.  So where are they now?  Who knows, I don't do cliques! (See my post on the BFF)

5. (And most important) I DIDN'T REACH MY GOAL WEIGHT AND I AIN'T GOING!!!! Enough said.

The moral of the story is this my friends:  High school was a small chapter in the novel of our lives.  It may have been a dark and dreary chapter, but nevertheless, JUST a chapter.  When I was in high school OVER achieving, my parents separated and later divorced.  That's the thing I remember most about the "good" old days...a broken family. What does not kill us , makes us stronger.  Worries and stress over someone else's expectation of us only traps us in one place. Don't be trapped.  Life is about moving forward and receiving all God has for us. It is about completing the tasks set before us, and keeping our eyes on the goal ahead. We are not in competition with another human being.  We are in competition with ourselves in the race God has set before each of us to run. Measure yourself against your own calling of God.   Are you stalled at the starting point? Or are you constantly moving forward?

Something to think about

It's how I was razed....