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.

A new beginning, an old name

Today is the first school day in the past 17 years or so on which I can say that I am not a student. I mean, I guess I don't technically graduate for another two weeks, but I've turned in all my work so I'm done. I can't believe it! And may I say, it feels pretty good.


So, in some ways, the inception of this blog marks my transition into what some like to call "the real world," whatever that is. As I exit academia for the time being, though, I find that I have a lot of thoughts stirring inside me that I'd like to share, and I'm hoping that other people might find them interesting. The only way of finding out, I think, is to put them somewhere in the public view and see what happens.


I think I'll begin at what I see as the beginning. If you've known me for awhile, you recognize the name in the url for this blog. I've had that online name for I don't even know how long. So even though this time in my life is a new beginning, I chose to keep it because it really sums up what I want to be, and what I want this blog to be. I'll start, then, with the story of this old name.



I imagine that streetlights are a phenomenon with which most will be familiar, although suburbanites may not have seen one for awhile. The numbers attached, 5814, are the real story here. The reference being made by those numbers is quite literally a reference: Ephesians 5: 8-14. It says:

"For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord.
Live as children of light (for the fruit of the light consists in all goodness, righteousness and truth) and find out what pleases the Lord. Have nothing to do with the fruitless deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. For it is shameful even to mention what the disobedient do in secret. But everything exposed by the light becomes visible, for it is light that makes everything visible. This is why it is said: 'Wake up, O sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.' "

The connection of the verse to streetlights is fairly obvious, I suppose. The passage talks about being a light in the darkness and making things visible, which is obviously what streetlights do. To understand the more personal connection for me, you need to know three things:



1. There is a streetlight directly outside my bedroom window.

2. My house is old and doesn't have AC, so in the summer the windows are always open.

3. I am one of the world's lightest sleepers.



So, in the summertime, all it takes is one gust of wind strong enough to move the curtains for me to have a streetlight shining right on my face, which never fails to wake me up instantly. Wake up, O sleeper! Get it?



In all seriousness, though, I think that God's light has the same effect. I want to bring that kind of light that shocks people awake to my darkened city... The kind of light that makes things visible... The kind that raises the dead. God knows that Cleveland needs it, and he's looking for a generation of these kinds of lights (That's why it's not just a singular streetlight). I'm sure I'll be writing more on that topic later, but for now that's what this whole thing is all about and why I feel the impetus to do this (even though I guarantee that some of my posts will be nothing more than random and nothing short of ridiculous).

A final thought on streetlights to close for today: Recently, Christy Wimber spoke at my church, and she said something (although I don't think she's the original author of it) that I don't think I'll ever forget: "Set yourself on fire, and people will come from miles around to watch you burn." That's how I want to serve God. And it's fitting, because in the early church, Christians really were streetlights in the most literal sense: Nero would coat them in pitch, stick them on posts and light 'em up so people could see at night on the roads. So while I'm not planning to die anytime soon, that kind of radical commitment is inspiring. I'll light up this city whatever way I can.