Well growing up is just not all that fun. For example, on my lunch hour today I called a doctor's office, called insurance, discussed my issue with 3 different insurance people, paid my rent, and set up my direct deposit for work... Since when is that what I imagined my lunch hours would be like?! I imagined they would be filled with quaint little lunch dates with co-workers and best friends or a boyfriend and I would be looking and feeling fabulous in crazy high heels not feeling a twinge of pain and I would have the world in the palm of my hand... That could not be further from the truth. Instead lunch hours consist of disheveled hair, most jewelry I originally had put on is taken off, hair up, and clothes stretched out not looking so cute anymore and to top it all of, a homemade turkey sandwich and sun chips. Imagine a 10 year old after school but fast forwarded 12 years later.... Yeah that's me. Maybe it is just the spaz that I am but I have learned to embrace the messiness of it all and I decided that this is what grown up life is really life.
But just for a moment let us just pretend that we adopt the Peter Pan mantra, "I won't ever grow up." So if I was to pick my favorite year of childhood/adolescence it would be my junior year in high school. I had a lead role in a play, I went to all of the school dances, I dated like crazy, and I did really well in school and not to mention that year I looked great! So if I were still that girl today, I would probably still have a different boy every day of the week and I would still be living at home and demanding ridiculous things from my parents and realizing every day just how much they do for me and feeling guilty for being a brat every other day.... Hmmmm maybe we grow up for a reason. Imagine the world if we all stopped progressing after the age of 17... Scary right?
If I have learned anything it is that God gives us trials for a reason. Some bigger than others but all are meant to teach us a lesson. We also need to remember that God doesn't give us anything we can't handle. We have these hard things in our life to make us that much stronger than before and if we are faithful until the end, we will become so much closer to our Father in Heaven.
Let me recall a story that a friend told at a summer camp that really spoke to me:
Jane was with her mom one day and because of some scheduling issues, Jane had to go with her mom to her embroidery group. The group was hand-embroidering a tapestry which was tied up on quilting benches while the women sat around it and were busy at work. Jane got bored of playing by herself so she decided to lay underneath the quilt and lay down on her back with her hands behind her head looking at the threads and the needles going through the fabric. She could see all kinds of thread colors and knots and messiness from the women's embroidering and they only seemed to be making a mess and making it worse as they went along! When Jane's dad came to pick her up she said to her dad, "That blanket is ugly. The threads are all messy and knotted... Why do they do that?" The dad then proceeded to lift Jane up onto his shoulders and she was able to get a full view of the tapestry from above. The picture that was forming was a beautiful landscape of a mountain range and an intricate waterfall that looked almost life like.
Life is like that. We look at our lives sometimes and think, "Good heavens what have I done and gotten myself into?! I am one hot mess...." To that I say- look at your life from an eternal perspective. The mess becomes beautiful if we let it refine us and not harden us.
Stefani
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