DEAR YOUNGER ME; I'm glad you waited.

An heartfelt letter to the younger version of me who waited. I remember September 2020.You had just written WAEC, and like many other young people, you thought the next chapter of your life would begin soon enough. University. Lectures. New friends. A new environment. All the things you had imagined about being a student. You didn't know that between that September and September 2025, you would spend five years waiting.Five years. Sometimes, I wonder if you ever fully understood how long five years would feel when you're watching everybody else move forward.People were gaining admission, graduating, serving. And you? You were still trying to enter university. At some point, someone who was your junior in secondary school became a corps member before you became an undergraduate.Bridget, how did you live with that? You were happy for people, but you were also asking questions you didn't always know how to answer. God, when will it be my turn? You watched people move from one stage of life to another while you seemed to be standing in the same place.The most difficult part was not the waiting itself. It was having to explain the waiting."How far?""When are you going?""Have you gained admission?"Questions. Questions. And more questions. Sometimes, you didn't even know what to tell yourself, let alone another person.You got tired of answering. Tired of explaining. Tired of trying to make your situation sound better than it felt.You got tired of saying, "I'm fine," when there were days you weren't sure you were.And, at some point, you started withdrawing.Even from church.No, God had not stopped mattering to you. You did not stop loving Him. But because you were tired of being seen and having to face another round of questions.You could be sitting in church, trying to worship, trying to hold yourself together, and suddenly, the tears would come, and there you were, trying to compose yourself in a place where you had come to meet with God.You were surrounded by people, but some parts of what you were carrying felt terribly lonely. You even got to a point where you had to leave the environment you were in. You needed some distance from the questions, the comparisons, and the constant reminder of the thing you were still waiting for.Looking back now, I don't think that girl needs to be judged for that, I think she needs to be understood. Waiting for five years was not some cute little testimony in the making. It was hard. Damn terrifying.There were days you probably wondered how much more of it you could take. Days you questioned yourself, your decisions, your future, and even the God you had served for so long.You knew the Scriptures. You knew the promises. You knew how to encourage other people.But there is a difference between knowing a Scripture and having to hold on to it when your own life doesn't seem to be making sense. You kept returning to Jeremiah 29:11:"For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end."And Isaiah 55:8:"For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD."You held on to those words, even when you didn't understand what they meant for your own situation. There were moments you questioned God. You wondered, after all the years of serving Him, after all the prayers, after all the things you believed about Him, why was this still happening to you?You had results. You had connections. You even had access to other people's connections.If admission were simply a matter of results, effort, or knowing the right people, you wondered why you hadn't gotten in earlier.What else were you missing?Was there something you hadn't seen? Something you were rushing past? Was there a reason you hadn't found your way into university yet? You even considered a diploma programme at a school where admission seemed much more likely.And yet, something in you wasn't settled.You couldn't explain everything. You didn't have the whole picture. But you knew you didn't want to make a decision simply because you were tired of waiting.And I want to be careful here, because I'm not saying that taking another route would have been wrong. Sometimes, another route is exactly what a person needs.But for you, at that time, you had to make a decision you could live with.You had to ask yourself whether you were choosing something because it was right for you or because you were exhausted from watching everybody else move ahead. And you chose to keep waiting. It wasn't easy. You didn’t have proof that everything would work out exactly as you imagined. But somewhere in the middle of all your uncertainty, you still had a conviction you couldn't quite shake.You believed God was still God.And you made up your mind that, no matter how bad things got, you would continue to serve Him.I'm so glad you did. But, little Bri, there is something else I want you to know.You were waiting for admission, but your life wasn't supposed to be on hold. You understood that. You learned digital skills. You developed practical skills. You worked. You kept exploring, learning, and finding ways to grow.You were becoming acquainted with parts of yourself that might have remained undiscovered if you had spent all your time staring at the door that hadn't opened yet.And I'm proud of you for that. Then came September 2025.I remember that Saturday evening after fellowship. You saw an update on WhatsApp, Mass Communication, check your portal". You checked reluctantly, because by that point, hope had become something you approached carefully.You didn't want to get excited only to be disappointed again. You didn't want to imagine another possibility and then have to pick yourself up when it didn't happen.There it was. AIP — Admission in Progress. Yay! You knew what that meant. It was admission. It was finally happening. It was only a matter of time.And you screamed.You screamed from somewhere deep inside you, from a place that had been waiting for years to release that joy. Finally! After all those years of asking when it would be your turn, you had an answer.Five years of waiting.Five years of wondering.Five years of trying to keep your life moving while one major part of it seemed to be standing still.Do you know what I find interesting?The girl who eventually walked onto that campus was not formed on the day she gained admission. You had been growing long before the admission letter arrived. And when the time finally came to go throughthat gate, you had already made a promise to yourself.You must not step into that campus and come out like people who did not wait for five years. I know what you meant. You were not saying that people who gained admission earlier had less potential or that their experiences mattered less.You were speaking to yourself. You knew what those five years had cost you. You knew what it meant to keep hoping when the evidence around you seemed to suggest that everybody else was moving forward, and you wanted to make the most of the opportunity when it finally came.You wanted to show up differently.Little Bri, look at you now. You're studying Mass Communication. You're taking your academics seriously. You're entering competitions. You're winning awards. You're discovering what you're capable of doing. You're doing things that the girl who was crying over admission might not have imagined herself doing. This is nowhere close to being the end. There is still so much to learn, so much to become, and so much of yourself you haven't met yet. Dear younger me,I wish I could go back and sit beside you on some of those difficult days.Not to give you a motivational speech, but to simply sit with you. I would let you talk about how tired you were. Let you admit that you were jealous sometimes, or embarrassed, or afraid that life was leaving you behind. I would let you ask God your questions without making you feel guilty for having them.And when you had said everything you needed to say, I would remind you of something you were slowly learning to believe: Your life was not less valuable because your timeline looked different. So, dear younger me, thank you.Thank you for not giving up on yourself.Thank you for daring to believe that there was more to you than what your circumstances seemed to suggest.Thank you for holding on to God, even when you had questions you couldn't answer.And thank you for the girl you were becoming long before the world had a new title to attach to your name.Today, I am proud of how far you've come.I'm proud of the way you're learning to take this journey seriously without pretending to have everything figured out. If I could say one last thing to you, it would be this: I'm glad you kept living while you waited.Yes, I'm glad you took your time. You stepped into that campus like a prophecy, finally cracking through the soil of time. Oh dear, we are not even done yet. With love,The woman you're becoming.🤍

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