The end of an era. I could only call this moment a weird experience, trying to sum up four years of crazy into a couple of paragraphs while also acknowledging that the crazy ends soon.

High school has been four years of being everything I was not while I was on my way to finding out who I am. And even in this state of knowing myself best, I feel like I know so much, yet I still know nothing at all.

From crutching through the halls on the first day of freshman year to this very moment, I have been busy. Participating in so much here at Legacy I learned so much about who I was not.

My whole life I had plans of becoming a great student athlete like my older brothers. But at the end of my freshmen year I still quit volleyball. Because I was not my brothers. For seven years show and treble choir had my full devotion. I tried tirelessly to become the musician and performer everyone else wanted me to be. But at the end of my junior year I quit choir.  Because I was not the musician everyone else wanted me to be.

Finding out who I was not became as painful as trying to scrub tattoos off of your skin with a wet washcloth. I began to change the the fabric of who I thought I would become. The blueprint that I once had for my life dissolved in my hands and seeped through the holes like sand. I had so many questions for God and not enough answers. By the end of my junior year I was lost. But in the same instance, participating so many things also showed me a lot about who I am.

I started managing football as a temporary pay-off for a favor that I owed a coach. I did not think that I had the patience, the time management skills or the work ethic that it took. And yet, I ended up staying in it throughout all four years. The stress taught me that I am able to succeed in the face of adversity. When things get more difficult, I only get more motivated. I can put in the hard work to aid someone else’s success and still find a sense of success for myself in that.

I joined musical theatre at the beginning of my senior year to fill some holes in my schedule. What I was expecting to be a blow off class, gave me the opportunity to fall in love with performing all over again. I turned into the musician that I wanted to be and that will forever impact how I view myself.

When I began newspaper, I did not think it would be a long term activity whatsoever. I would walk up to classrooms and quite literally shake with fear while standing outside for ten, fifteen, sometimes twenty minutes before I either finally walked in or went back to the journalism room. If you told me then that I would end up be an editor, I would’ have told you that there was no way that you could happen. But despite my extreme anxiety and serious love for staying inside my comfort zone, newspaper taught me that I am not held back by my weaknesses or defined by them. I learned through this experience that I deserve the space, the time and the attention that I take up.

Knowing all of these things about myself gave me the courage to drop all of my old dreams and pursue what God has put in my heart. Freshman Kendra wanted to play volleyball and get a teaching degree. So it’s so strange that senior Kendra is majoring in Music Business with a focus of Worship Leadership at Dallas Baptist University in the fall. Walking in a totally different direction from where I once was.

All of these things helped me write a rough draft of the complexities and tangles that make up who I am. Yet, I also know at the end of all of the crazy, when I am falling asleep in my bed for one of the last nights ever with my diploma on the wall and all these things gone, that who I am in Jesus will continue to remain. It is senior year and my high school experience will soon fade, but all that God has planned for my life has hardly just begun.

So that leaves me here, trying to some up four years of crazy in a couple of paragraphs with a full understanding that who I am not leads me to a better understanding of who I am.