Being 28

  Let me tell you why your mid to late 20's are confusing. There are no rules, but everything is marketed towards you. People older than you want to be your age, people younger than you want to be your age. American culture idolizes this time in life, but they don't define it. I have friends who are married with three kids and friends who live with their parents. Friends who hold jobs that require lots of responsibility and friends who play video games all day. Friends who dress in high quality, fashionable clothes and friends who shop at Target (I fall in this category...youth ministry doesn't lend itself to nice digs). Yet among all that diversity and chaos, people still think that this time of life is to be most desired. It leads those who are actually in their later 20's to be confused, really confused as to what is expected.

  On a given Sunday morning I will have a teenager tell me how "old" I am and turn around to an older adult tell me how "young" I am. I'm neither young nor old and for the first time in life, age is not primary criteria for who I'm going to be or who my friends will be.

  It's a strange life stage because, although being at the forefront of everyone's idealism, the idealism is a fraud. Reality of being in your 20's isn't late nights and friends and freedom, it's learning how to be an adult in real life. You're no longer playing "grown up" like you did in college or even just after. You're the real deal, but no one has ever outlined that for you. It's making mistakes and learning from them. It's realizing that if you don't get enough sleep, you are going to be a disaster the next day (remember when you could get three hours of sleep and never skip a beat...that was glorious). Heck, its realizing that you would rather go to bed at 9 than do anything else. It's your late 20's that you start to feel your limits, but its the time that culture says is when you are limitless.

  So being 28 isn't all it's cracked up to be and my rapidly approaching 29th birthday doesn't sound all that much better, but alas, I will enjoy this time. If for no other reason than b/c everyone else wants it and I feel that I need to due diligence to my 20's.

 

Bebo got it right

  A long time ago (high school maybe?), I would listen to a Bebo Norman song and ponder the lyric "I'm no farther forward, just farther along." And I didn't understand it at all. Seriously, I thought it was the dumbest, most nonsensical lyric written short of "bananas in pajamas." I just didn't get it.

Now I do. Wholeheartedly.

  I always thought that as one grew older, wisdom would collect and build. People should get smarter and better. What I was too naive to realize is that life and people are more complicated than that. You don't simply gain a skill in life, never forget it and then move on the the next (i.e. calculus, dunking a basketball, etc). Life is bigger than that. People are too finite for that ability.

  Instead of a gradual growth, we are cyclical people. Sure, we learn and grow and the Lord sanctifies us, but there are themes to our lives. There are specific struggles. I'm no farther forward of where I was when I was 22. I'm still anxious, fearful, silly, and shy. I'm still me. Now I'm just old enough to acknowledge that I really have no idea what I'm doing and need the Lord to intervene in my life minute by minute. Maybe that's progress.

  So "I'm no farther forward, just farther along" in life. I have more years of the same struggle. More years of the same neediness. More years of the same hope. Same joys and fears. And those years have been good and rich. Full of days where I grit my teeth and pray that I am a blessing to others rather than a hindrance. Days where my soul sings hallelujah the way I deeply long for it to. Days of fun and relationships and understanding. And days of confusion, frustration and chaos.

  I've been fortunate enough to share these thoughts with some of my mentors in life. They laugh because they have long since known this to be reality. Bebo knew it, too.

Whoa did I get uglier?

I was prettier when I lived in Florida. Maybe that sounds ridiculous, but really I was looking at pictures the other day. It kind of bothered me, and then that bothered me and then I was caught in a vicious cycle. It was bad news. What could be different? I don't do anything differently and the weather here is much more conducive to good hair days. I concluded that in Florida those around me were the reason. But tonight I was listening to a song that reminded me that the Lord has put beauty in us and it is revealed when we live for His glory and walk with Him. Lately, I feel so tyrannized by tasks that I disappear. My love for the Lord, my joy found in Him is diminished. My heart is grieved by so many things around me that I delight less.

So how do I trust the Lord now? The "beauty He has put in me are for His joy and His glory" and that is how I want to live.

Today I have been thinking about 1 Samuel 8 and 2 Peter 3. The first passage deals with Israel's desire for a king and how they want to be like the other nations. The second passage begs the question that in light of the fact that Jesus is coming back and this world will be destroyed, how then should we live. I think these two passages deal with similar underlying issues. It is so easy to get caught up in the day to day-in being like other nations. I forget so easily that this world is fleeting and so I should stake a claim in what is forever, in what is good and fulfills the promises it makes-and that is Christ.

Last week I read a book that said the key to youth ministry is "playful detachment." As it unpacks that term, I couldn't agree more. My identity has to be removed from my calling. It is simply work. An outpouring of God's work and love. I can remember feeling that playful detachment, but now, I just feel crushed. And so, "in light of the fact that Christ is King", what does it look like to find my beauty in Him and not the circumstances around? It is trusting and abiding in Him day to day. Detaching myself from the ideals and expectations of those around me and attaching myself to the ideals and expectations of a loving Father. It is repenting of my need to please and my pride and arrogance and clinging to amazing grace.