A New Series of Blogs: How to...

I'm not sure where the idea came from, and it probably isn't all that original, but I've decided to do a series of blogs that all begin with the prompt "How to...." If you have any suggestions for the series, by all means let me know! For now, I will start off the series with:

"How to Become an Adult (Because I Have Arrived)"

Adulthood is not all it is cracked up to be.

I remember thinking when I was little that when I grew up I would be able to drive the kind of car I wanted, go wherever I wanted whenever I wanted, eat what I wanted, play as much as I wanted, watch t.v. as much as I wanted and say the things that popped into my mind as often as I wanted to open my mouth. Granted, it is probably true that children who grow up with very few boundaries, with the weight of family responsibility on their shoulders or without God giving them things like acutely sensitive consciences might not dream of adulthood as I did. But I was not one of those children. I was a child with what seemed like 10 bajillion boundaries, very little responsibility and a very, very sensitive/over-reactive (God-given?) conscience.

Suddenly, that child was in university, driving, without immediate parental supervision or consequences to broken parental boundaries but--dadgummit!--with a still-burdensome sense of being watched by Someone. Constantly.

After university, that child went halfway around the world and back; and even though she wasn't driving, she most certainly exercised more of her right to be an adult, to be herself, to do whatever she wanted to do. At this point, however, there was also an increasing sense of doing what others and Someone Else wanted her to do. Going, for example, to places she didn't want to go. Eating lots and lots of things she didn't want to eat. Staying with people she didn't want to stay with. Writing things she didn't want to write and working places she didn't want to work.

There is a rebellious part of me (perhaps it is the still-child in me) that wants to cling to my youth and to the simplicity of my childhood; Jesus Himself commended children on numerous occasions for their extraordinary faith. But the child in me that demanded an autonomous adulthood has died. To become an adult, I must deny myself, take up my cross and follow Him. That is not the adulthood I once craved; but the point is that my craving is no longer the point.