More and more, recently, I have been hearing a word that didn’t seem to make much sense. People have been talking about how difficult it was adulting. Even my word-processing software identifies that as a mistake. Suddenly, the fact that you are an adult has become an action and is now a verb. You aren’t an adult, you simply act like one… from time to time. When it is not too hard.
Okay, that must mean that those who are not adults are children. Even worse, maybe they are still stuck in those pretty awful teen-age years when they thought they knew everything about every single thing.
I remember when my children were at that stage. I even look way, way back and remember when I felt that way too. Of course, I was correct! My kids, on the other hand, simply didn’t know what they didn’t know.
Becoming an adult means a lot of things but the one thing that most springs to my mind is learning how to take responsibility on an on-going basis. Once you have acquired this skill, much of the other pluses and minuses of being an adult fall into line.
Do you remember what you thought you would be doing when you were a child? My grandson changes direction pretty often. When he was a tad bit younger, he wanted to be Batman or Spiderman or even a ninja from Ninjago. Now days, he seems to be focusing on actual careers (what, being Batman isn’t a good career path?)
Some weeks he wants to be a photographer and an artist (after taking a lot of pictures with an iPhone.) Recently, he has wanted to be a scientist and an artist. That might be because he received a very cool science projects gift for his sixth birthday.
Interestingly, one thing that has remained constant is that he wants to be an artist. He has skills in this area so, we will see. I did point out to him that his Mommy and his Grandfather were both scientists and artists as well. The eye roll I received was one that only a six year old could easily get away with.
The thing is, we have a lot of dreams even when we are young. Those dreams can change as we grow with experience. At some point in life, we start acting on what we hope to do with our lives.
If you do not grow and learn responsibility, it is difficult to also become the you that you were supposed to be. As long as you act like a child or a sulky teenager, you will never experience the joy of growing in wisdom and living your life in a way that is pleasing to God.
So, adulting isn’t easy. I guess it isn’t. I remember many nights of struggling and wondering how to make ends meet. I worried about my family. I wondered if I could possibly be a good mother based on the poor examples from my own childhood.
The one thing that never crossed my mind was that being an adult was hard. I knew that life was hard. It had been so for most of my life. Being an adult, on my own, sometimes seemed easy in comparison.
Becoming a mother brought all of my life into a new perspective. I was responsible for not only me but for three loving children. Each one so different from the other that trying to herd them in and still encourage each one was a difficult task but one that I mostly enjoyed.
The people who don’t like being an adult may never experience this kind of joy. I knew that my children were a gift from God. I wanted to thank him for that gift by teaching them how to grow and not by abusing them and tearing them down constantly. I can’t say I was that great at being a parent but I did try to do my best.
I sincerely hope that this phase of not wanting to grow up is a passing one. However, I suspect that it is not. For the world to collapse as it one day will, there will have to be a lack of people who will take any form of responsibility to fix it. That is, to look to God and to get down on their knees and ask for his help.
Some days, it seems like those days of non-existent responsibility are here right now.
1 Corinthians 13:11
When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things.