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Growin' Up

While sitting in our living room this past December we (my siblings and I) were discussing the fact that I was going to be turning 24 within the next week. My Dad remarked “Wow, Steph! You’re almost grown up!”

I’ve been thinking about that statement for the past couple of months and realizing that I am practically grown up. I did the whole college thing, got my degree and have been working at my full time job for ten months now, and I’m a little scared.

I guess I never realized being grown up would be like this. I sit and look at other grown ups with their vast years of experience being in a grown up state, and it scares me. I see stressed out, tired out, worn down, and sad people. It makes me wonder where the joys of childhood went. I know some of this is due to the affects of our sin nature, but it still amazes me how unhappy some Christians are.

I remember as a child being awe struck at so many things, learning and understanding how things work together. How numbers are added, how you mix colors together and make more colors. As we gradually grow more independent the joys and wonders slowly fade. So slowly in fact, that we don’t notice it until as adults we venture back into the world we once lived and see how children are. Often we look back with contempt and wonder how people could be so silly (I’ve done this on many occasions, sadly), dumb and sometimes seemingly insensitive towards others feelings they are. And we scorn them because we understand as adults the things that as children were mysteries, things that could not be explained so they were wonderful.

I remember as a child sharing a room with my sister and one Sunday morning late in the fall my mom came into our room and said “Girls, look out the window!!” and she opened our bedroom shade and we looked out and it had snowed! The very first snowfall that fall. It was amazing. I don’t remember what year that was but the joy my sister and I felt from that first snowfall was unforgettable.

It is amazing how our reaction to the first snowfall (and the many subsequent snowfalls after it) changes as an adult. To us it means we’ll have to clean off the car before work, which means getting up early, which also means not getting as much sleep. It means slippery roads and trying to remember not only do we have to get up earlier to clean off the car but we have to get up even early so we can leave early so we can be on time for work. Then and to make matters worse we freeze cleaning off the car and freeze driving to work, until the car warms up and begins spewing out warm air.

I tire of people saying how much they dislike winter. Last winter I had the privileged (at the time I won’t have called it that… in fact I hated it) to work in the check in barn at Pepsi. Two garage doors went up and down all day as trucks pulled in and I checked the inventory on them. During the coldest part of the winter it was below freezing in that barn.

God used that experience to teach me a valuable lesson. Sometimes you need to put on 2 pairs of long johns, two pairs of pants, four shirts, a vest, a coat, a hat, a scarf, 3 pairs of socks, 2 pairs of gloves and shoe goo yours shoes and grit your teeth and see what you can learn.

I walked out of that experience having regained my wonder and enjoyment for winter. I really came to enjoy it. There is a stillness in winter that you don’t get with any other season, a harshness that creates something beautiful. The coldness that means the dying of something old but also the opportunity to save energy and bust forth with something totally new when the freezing temperatures are over. There wouldn’t be the wonders of spring without the harshness of winter. And then there is always the joy of shedding most of those clothes and feeling lighter and not as clumsy.

As I continue to grow up, and mature (hopefullyJ), I don’t want to lose that wonder I had as a child, that enjoyment and that amazement. Yes, things lose their mystery as we grow older but they are still amazing because God created them for his glory.

David says in Psalm 51:12 “Restore to me the joy of your salvation and uphold me with your willing spirit.” (ESV)

He is asking God to remind him of the joy that salvation brings to us. As Christians it isn’t something new, we should already know this joy but we forget.  I think that this isn’t because God isn’t reminding us of this joy, I think because it is because we choose not to take the joy he offers us.

God holds his joy out to us and we choose not to take it. We stand there and look at it. Joy that is free to us, costing us nothing and we shake our heads, and stare at it wondering what it is and if we really want it. And we choose not to take it. It is really sad. God is willing to give it to us, but we think we know better and we are content to stand there in our stress, in our tiredness, and in our utter exustion and refuse what he holds out to us.

We choose to live in our bitterness, our unhappy state. We choose not to be content. We aren’t happy with what we are doing. Saying, “This isn’t what I had planned, this isn’t want I wanted.” “I didn’t want to be doing……, I wanted to be……”, “I didn’t want to be in (a place or city), and I wanted to be in (another place or city).

Paul says in Philippians 4:12, “I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well feed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.” (NIV)

I think we can call say we live on the plenty side of things. But my point is that Paul says he has found the SECRET of being content. It is a secret. Not everyone knows. Sadly I can’t believe how many Christian people haven’t discovered the secret. It isn’t like you have to search hard and long to find yet. Yet we ignore it. We choose not to be content. All we need is God, Christ crucified for us. Not in God plus……. Just simply in him. Then you will have found the secret to contentment.

I don’t want to lose that awe and wonder that contentment to be amazed at God’s creation. That joy of being a child.

I still want to walk out the door in the morning on my way to work and breath a deep breath of fresh and just be happy cause it is a new day and wonder what I might learn, and be amazed that the sun is coming up again and that the air is, whatever temperature it is, and that it smells the way it does. Even though deep down I would rather be in my bed still sleeping.

I want to get to work and walking in the door and smell the smells and be excited to see what happens as the day unfolds, even if my boss is in a bad mood or even if anything goes wrong.

I want to get in my car and drive home and be so so excited to pull in the driveway and see if I beat my Dad home and say “Hi guys” when I walk in the door and see what is for dinner and just be happy cause there is dinner and because I have a family to come home to and that I have a home.

If you would have told me a year and a half ago that I would be 24, still paying off college debt and living with my parents I would have scoffed in your face and said whatever. I wanted something different. I wanted to be living in my only place somewhere else doing something that would earn me recognition as a person. I thought I deserved what I wanted.

Now looking back, I don’t care what I desired back then, I don’t care that those dreams I had then stand unfulfilled. Quite frankly I stand discussed with the person I use to be. That person was unhappy living so much for the next day that that she couldn’t see and enjoy what she had at that moment. She made plans for years to come and but was too busy to enjoy what she held in her hand already.

I look forward to the rest of my life because God has taught me that if I still live in my parent’s basement 20 years from now that, that is enough for me. If I never marry and have kids of my own, or never do another thing that the world would consider amazing, if I never travel to far off places or see or do all the things I’d like to do that is ok because in the end it doesn’t matter.

Dreams change, people change, contentment is taking the dreams God has for your life, no matter how big or how small and embracing them as your own, because God’s plans for your life are better than anything you could ever have come up with for yourself.

I hope I never lose that wonder, and that joy I had as a child. I hope I never lose the contentment I’ve found in Christ in the last year.

I sometimes wonder if the reason God doesn’t give us some of the things we desire (other than them not being good for us) is because he sees that we aren’t happy and content with what he has given us. If I gave someone something amazing, and they weren’t happy with it I don’t think that I’d be very inclined to give them anything else.