So it occurred to me this last week that in a little over a week, I turn 20...wow, seriously, my whole life I've always felt older than my age. Too much has happened in the last seven years to fully grasp the meaning of my age. I guess when I was twelve, I felt twelve. At fifteen, I think I felt fifteen. At eighteen, I felt twenty or twenty one...now, I really can't put a finger on it. I guess it all just sort of slipped away.
I find myself constantly trying to hurry life up. I don't know if it's because I feel like when something good happens to me, it doesn't last, so I should hurry it up so maybe it will feel like it will last longer. Or I think a lot of it can be attributed to the fact that my mom died at a lot younger age than she should have, and I'm worried the same will happen to me. I don't know.
Six months ago, I was planning on being married by June 20th of this year. Since those plans obviously changed, I've gone from planning my wedding to planning the rest of my life...or at least, up to the next life interruption. I've realized a lot about what I really want to do, and I think realized a lot of potential of what I can do, but it all feels like I should be there by now. For some reason, I relate so much better with people about 23 and up. I've never related to my age group...ever. I can remember being freaking five years old, and going to an adult Bible study with my parents, and having full on conversations with adults. I played fine by myself as a child, but I could never play well with other kids. Maybe that was the homeschooling and the lack of a Sunday school at our small reformed church.
I don't know what it is. I'm always in a hurry. And as soon as I take a breath, return to my age, and realize I don't need to rush, I start hyperventilating and panicking, like seriously freaking out. Why is that? Seriously? My gosh, I'm not even freaking two decades old right now!
The last couple of weeks at Elevate, which has basically become my church home, have been about just going out there and doing it. Go do your passion. You've been given a new year, so don't wait to be escorted and asked to do something, just go out there and do it! (Or as I would say to some, just grow a pair for crying out loud!!!) God gave you some pretty cool passions and talents and inbred desires for a reason...don't waste them. Don't pretend to be something your not, do something unique for a change. Don't be like Scarlet freaking O'Hara with the attitude of "Whether I have to lie, cheat or steal...I'll never go hungry again" and do something that you can do on your own without deceiving every person around you just so you can have your five minutes of fame.
Go out there, do what God actually wants you to do, and stop wasting time trying to be something your not.
Am I ranting now? I feel like I'm ranting.
I'll just end by saying this. Last week, I heard a message that definitely pushed me in the direction I need to go. When my last life interruption happened, I was informed that I was "too young" (yes, that is truly the reason I was given for that particular issue), something that I've always been afraid of being told. For the last four months, I've been downing myself into thinking that no dumb 19-year-old can do the outrageous things I actually want to pursue. No one will ask me to do that. No one would ever hire me to do that.
But maybe I don't have to wait. The time is now. Not five years down the road, not in waiting, but now. And to be perfectly honest, some pretty cool things have happened since I learned to accept that, just because I'm 19 going on thirty, that doesn't mean I can't do the impossible.
Jeremiah 29:11
1 Timothy 4:12
Isaiah 41:10
