“When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me.” 1 Corinthians 13:11
I think if you talk to most girls they tell you they want to date an older guy. There’s a lot of whys to it. [We assume that] They have a job and make money. They’re able to drive. They have a direction they’re heading in. They know themselves so they know what they want. They are responsible and capable. They can be emotionally aware and considerate of others. These are just my guesses, but in the end, we’re looking for maturity.
I’ve been reflecting on it for my own reasons, but I don’t think any of that is true, guys. I think that for girls too, we’re not the more mature, advanced ones just because we’re girls. Are we even all those things? I think everyone just comes to a point where you need to choose to grow up and leave our immaturity behind us. I get it: easy to say, hard to live out. It’s hard to take responsibility over your life and the choices you make because being passive is easier: we go back to the same sins, we repeat the same mistakes, we hang out with the same people, and we don’t challenge ourselves to be more than what we are.
I think a lot of us miss childhood.
Maybe we didn’t have as many issues, we weren’t aware of our faces and bodies, we didn’t have hours of homework, there wasn’t this pressure to find someone, and the pressure to figure out your life. Nostalgia can do that to you. I think that I want to retain some of myself as a child: how easily I loved, forgave, enjoyed life, and wasn’t self-conscious. I also want to leave behind a lot too. I don’t want to be incapable of dealing with complex emotions, helpless to my surroundings, ignorant to the reality of the world, and unable to express myself.
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I’ve been taking a course, Emotionally Healthy Spirituality, and it made me (painfully) aware of all the ways that I wasn’t fully mature yet. I wasn’t an emotional infant or child, but I was in (in my personal opinion) the worst stage: emotional adolescents. Growing pains are real. So, let me be honest about what that means.
I can…
Be defensive
Feel threatened and alarmed by criticism
Keep score of what someone gives to me so that I can ask for something later in return
Deal with conflict poorly, blaming others, appeasing, going to a third party, pouting, or ignoring the issue entirely
Become preoccupied with myself
Have great difficulty truly listening to another person’s pain, disappointments, or needs
Be critical and judgmental
Have you ever wanted to throw a book out?
Even now, I want to appeal that well...sometimes I’m not those things. It’s hard to look at those words and have them attached to me, but I don’t want to live in a lie. I want to be real to myself and stop masking the problems I have because...I want people to think I’m better than that? Who cares? Behind it all, I’m still suffering and other people are still suffering because I’m not functioning properly.
I could say well that’s just who I am. “I’m an Aries. I’m an INFJ. I’m Type 2w3.”
When did any of those things give us a haul pass on enacting pain onto ourselves and others? When did Jesus tell us that it’s loving for Him to leave us exactly how He found us?
Enough. I’ve had enough. I am so sick of myself.
I could be 32. 42. 52. 102. None of that means that I am growing up.
I don’t want to look back at my life 10 years from now with different people, different city or last name, whole different life, and still the same person. That doesn’t change with age or time, it is proactive as I pursue after God in all my woes, joys, challenges, defeats, and victories. It is constantly reflecting on whether or not I am allowing God to change me, giving myself the same grace and kindness Jesus lavishes on me when I fail again and again, and a lifelong submission of every fiber of my being over to Christ.
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One of my biggest fears? That I’m still the same person that I was before I began my intimate walk with Jesus.
I have actual nightmares of people from my past holding my sin and shame against me. That I’m a hypocrite. So, I make these tests to prove to myself that I’m different. I have to be the best small group leader, give the most moving testimonies, and make up for all the ways I’ve failed. I don’t think I’ve ever heard God tell me to do all that or be all those things, but I just can’t let myself enjoy God’s gifts and grace until I feel like I’ve earned it.
It’s again, the recurring theme of my life.
I am still letting God rewire the anxious thoughts and constant need to prove myself. God is letting me fail so that I don't succeed miserably, and I want to grow up: be someone who is healthy and thriving in my walk with God and others. I am struggling to understand that the person that I am is not the person I am stuck being. I want to be able to say what is true to me without feeling like people who disagree are against me. I want to be someone who is able to respect others without needing to change them. I want to let people make mistakes and give them room to grow. I want to be more and more like Jesus, and that means accepting the reality that I’m still not there yet but I’m fighting to be by letting God fight for me.
I don’t think I have a step-by-step of how to grow up. There’s things we can do that help. I grow within my community, being part of a church, being honest about my good and bad, spending time with God, having moments of silence or praying, and reading and applying the Bible. I can do all those things and not grow too. It takes a hunger for more. I am not content with better, I don’t want to strive to be a better person, more mature, etc. I want to be the best because that is the person Jesus has now enabled me to be. I am not alone in this battle. I was never alone in the first place.
So, I think growth starts with surrender. It starts with recognizing the reality of the people we all are, that I am: far from good, immature, inconsiderate, and unloving. Then surrendering that under the perfect hands of God to take all of that and create something more beautiful than I can imagine. It isn’t an easy process. It takes the blood, sweat, and tears of a person who is fully man and fully God to take on. It isn’t something you can stop midway either. Growing up is an all-consuming choice, and I’m scared of it honestly. Scared to pray big bold prayers to be more like Christ but more scared of what it looks like to turn around and walk the other direction.
I don’t know where these prayers will lead me. I don’t know who I’ll be by any age, but I know that God will never stop pushing me to grow out of infancy, childhood, and adolescence until I am the full and completed picture of what it means to be made in the likeness of Christ.
Growing pains turn into God glorifying promises.
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