Growing Up...

I am presently experiencing a strange dichotomy between feeling like a kid again and feeling old(er). I am living once again in the same bedroom in which I grew up, having been out of it for 7 years while my sister lived there. Being in there brings back funny emotions sometimes of feeling like a kid. Road tripping to Minneapolis on Saturday with my 20 year old sister and my parents brought back kid feelings too: laying in the back, falling asleep to the murmur of my parent's voices. There is still the same inexplicable feeling of safety in that as there was 15 years ago.

Once in a while, I just return to childhood in my mind now that I'm home with my family - moments with my parents that make me wish I was 10 or 12 again, and yet still fully appreciating being an adult, with my parents. I am loving being ‘grown up' and relating to my parents and the rest of the world as an adult, and yet sometimes I feel like I just got ‘old.' I'm not sure what defines ‘old' when I'm 26, and I know that it's not ‘old' in comparison…I don't feel old as a grandma, or even as old as my parents (which doesn't seem ‘old' to me anymore).

I guess I simply realize sometimes that I AM 26, not 16. I attend my siblings show choir competitions with more of a proud parent perspective than a cheering sister, and Karyssa (16) told me I sounded ‘like a mom' the other day. Ha Ha!! Oh well. I actually am just fine with that. I am ridiculously proud of my younger siblings for everything they are doing with their lives, not just with show choir, and I'm not ashamed to tell the world, even if it makes me sound ‘like a mom'. So I guess it's some of those things that make me feel older…maybe I'm just feeling my actual age.

At 26, most around me are married, with one to several kids; my younger brother is married, all my high school friends are married, and I'm living at home! I know many of us post World Racers are in very similar places in life, but none live near me, so I'm most aware of those around me at church.

This separation of lives between myself and others used to be a really hard issue for me. I didn't know how to relate to married people, or those with kids and to be honest, I believe that once people marry and start having kids, they don't know how to relate to single people as well as they used to. Lives take on different focuses, and that's normal and mostly good. I used to feel so alone and sorry for myself because I wasn't a part of the ‘married' people, and they couldn't understand so much of who I was/am.

I believe I have grown (gotten ‘old') and now my identity is not so much in whether people relate to me but whether I am honestly relating to my Jesus. It bothers me much less that my life looks differently than so many around me. And I think that now I am able to share life as an adult, (not with an insecure teenage mindset) with other adults, married or single, parents or not, older or younger than myself. I can't say I really know what this looks like, because I'm not sure I'm living it out, but I'm not afraid of it anymore. I am beginning to realize my capabilities as a grown woman…working as a free medical clinic manager; relating to people of all ages and many walks of life; discipling people wherever I am; doing whatever I do with excellence. In recognizing these skills, I also recognize my lack in follow through…believing on a day to day basis that it's all true. But I'm learning. Day to day.

And while I'm learning to be an adult, I still enjoy the moments with my siblings and my parents that bring me back to being a kid again…silliness, safety, peacefulness, freedom, and love…