I'm back in my hometown in Pennsylvania for a couple of weeks, mainly because my sister is graduating from high school.

I took a drive around town tonight in the early summer darkness.  I almost instinctively switch into autopilot when I'm driving around my hometown.  It's as natural to me as walking – perhaps more so.  But tonight, I was thinking.  Observing.  Remembering.

For the first time in my life, I found myself longing for the days when I was my sister's age. Newly 18, right out of high school, the world is your oyster.  Anything's possible.  All you have to do to find your diamond is dig hard enough.

As I drifted along in my car, I remembered driving up the stretch of road that leads to the PA Turnpike interchange to visit my best friend.  This was before she moved with her mom to a city 45 minutes away and when "our" Chinese restaurant – right by her house – was still in business.  I passed the mom-and-pop ice cream stand where we used to sit at the picnic table and talk about boys.  I was driving my original Cavalier, the silver one with purple pinstripes that I'd picked out myself – before it was totaled in the summer of 2005 by a drunk driver rear ending me at a stoplight at 9am.  A little further down the road, if you turned right at the light before continuing towards the interchange, is the rest stop where I worked with all my friends.  I worked there for six years, starting at 16.  As tedious as the job could have been, I loved it back then, before the management went to crap and everybody left.  I made so many friends there who I'd never have been able to associate with through the politics of high school.  But at work, there was no social hierarchy, and anyone who acted like there was didn't last long.

I had a big, wonderful group of friends that year.  We were always doing something – at the movies or the mall or just hanging out in someone's finished basement.  I fancied myself in love that summer, with a man who would go on to string me along for the next three years.  It was before he broke my infant heart by sleeping with someone else, before my best friend's ex made himself known as a compete sleazebag, and before I learned the viciously hard way that Teenage Love is Not Forever.  (At least, not usually.)

It was perfectly acceptable for me to live in a fantasy back then, because, hey, that's What Teenagers Do.

Now, I just get mistaken for my 17-year-old sister.

But I'm sure there could be worse things.

I watched my sister tonight, getting ready to go with her friends to Pizza Hut after her senior voice recital, and I envied her youth.

Innocence is ignorance and ignorance is bliss.  Really.  Truly.  Purely.  Bliss.

I shouldn't be complaining.  I'm doing what I love.  I have a Vision that's straight from God.  He has provided in ways I could never have imagined, and I get to write.  I get to dream to my heart's content.  I get to dance around my first Grown Up Apartment singing to my iPod and scribbling down any random metaphor or quip I think sounds clever and creating characters that I've now sunk my teeth into and can't let go of until I've told their stories.  I get to live two minutes from two of the truest friends I've ever had.  And when I go back to NC in a week, I'll be taking with me my very own little girl puppy to snuggle with every night.

But I'd be lying if I said there wasn't something missing.

My sister has been dating her boyfriend for nearly three years.  They grew up together.  There's such purity about their affection.  It's beautiful – almost childlike.  There's nothing to muddy the waters or scratch the lens.  They only see each other, unpolluted by the Big Bad World.

It hit me tonight, driving around my old haunts listening to Matchbox 20, that I'll never experience that kind of love.

And so I longed to go back.  Back to a time before potential relationships were so prone to all kinds of ridiculous complications.  Before pressures of age, expectations of accomplishments, baggage, history.  Before I had to work out regularly or wore night cream or got set in my own routine.  Before my trust was repeatedly broken and before I ever uttered the words, "I can't go through that again."

But I can't go back.  I'll never have that innocent, naive kind of love that my sister has. I have to accept it.  But I know God's timing is perfect, so I have to trust Him.

He's molded me into who I am today (not without substantial kicking and screaming on my part, I must admit), and I couldn't be more grateful for it.  Because what my sister has yet to learn, I know.  I know how to stand strong in faith while everything else around me crumbles.  I know what God has spoken in my heart and in what direction He wants me to go.  I know what His vision is for my life.  I know how to get – and stay – plugged into the Power Source.  I know where the answers lie, and that God's reason for everything is always for my own good.

I know that, fully trusting in God, I Can Make It On My Own.  In a different town, a different state, a different country.  That He always has to come first.  That my sweet romance with my Lord is purer and will last far longer than any other ever could.

Apparently, He wanted me to learn all that first.  And I'm sure someday I'll look back and say I'm glad I did.

So maybe I don't really want to go back.  Because, seriously, who wants to have to relearn all that?