Growing Up

For those of you keeping score at home, this is the 23rd post on my blog! It's interesting that it worked out like that, because this is also my first post as a 23 year old. Hah, I almost wrote "the first post of my 23rd year," but that obviously wouldn't be true because this is the beginning of my 24th... but yeah.

Anyway, I've been feeling for quite some time like this particular year was going to be a big year of change and growth for me. It all has to do with the process of growing up. I realize, of course, that there's no getting around the fact that being 23 years old makes you an adult by any reasonable standard. It's just that I didn't really feel like one.

See, in way too many areas and situations, I've still been waiting for life to come to me. When you're a kid, that's pretty much how things go. Life happens to you, and you roll with it and have as much fun as you can while still fulfilling the demands being placed on you by authority figures so you don't get in trouble. In America, we've managed to extend this phase even further than just grade school or even high school. College is pretty much the same deal; it's like a four-year (or more) extension of childhood and freedom from the dreaded real world. Then you get spit out at the end of it, and (especially if you graduate with a liberal arts degree) you're no closer to knowing how to handle the real world than you were before.

At least that's what happened to me. Anyway, the end result for me was essentially a vague and nameless uneasiness about my life and future. Kind of like, wow, I'm a college graduate, but who am I and what am I doing? And because that's such an open-ended question that has no easy answers, the path of least resistance becomes doing nothing.

Unfortunately, that pretty much creates a vicious cycle: you have anxiety, you ignore it and don't make progress, which makes you more anxious. It sucks. The question, both for me and for others who find themselves in this situation, is whether the crushing weight of expectation and fear will drive you to God or away from him.

For quite awhile, I resisted what God was trying to do through my anxiety. Eventually though, the desperation it created led me to his feet. The funny thing was, he actually wanted to heal me, not make me do a bunch of stuff I felt powerless to do. He wanted to teach me the fear of God and help me get rid of my fear of men, and he also made much more of his love real to me.

I can only be a man because I am his child.

As that truth has been steadily sinking into me, a lot of things have been happening. I'm becoming more truly myself than I have ever been. I care much less about what people think of me. Plus, God has been providing for me greatly, both spiritually and physically. He's giving me strength and vision again, not to mention a job (or two jobs, actually). I'm learning how to be much more purposeful with my time too. I regret the time I've wasted, but I believe God is redeeming the years the locust has eaten (Joel 2:25). He's leading me into a brand new season. At 23, I finally feel like I'm growing up.