About how necessary it was, about how people just fell off into this deep hole of not-going-to-church once they were graduated from college ministries and had "real life" to deal with.
Yeah, I used to think, That is so true. (as if I knew)
About how there were so many life-altering and dramatic changes happening in people's lives during this young adult time. Choices about spouses and careers and children or no children and where to live and how to spend paychecks and what to do with their lives.
Yeah, I used to think, that makes so much sense. You have to decide so many things when you are a young adult. (as if I had a clue)
I think I read so many of these well-meaning articles on the state of the church and young adults when I was a teenager that I walked into young adulthood already convinced of all of these things I was supposed to be figuring out.
Hol and I used to spend a lot of time sitting on the floor of her bedroom talking about life. Usually one of us would bring up some huge question that doesn't ever really have an answer (like, when does one really become considered an adult?) and we would sit and mull over our trains of thought, talking through all sorts of reasoning and opinions and general confusion.
A frequent topic of these catch-all pondering sessions was that of the role of choice in our lives.
Combine all of those young-adults-are-in-dire-straits stories and society's general sentiments about the necessity of "settling down" and I was left feeling that I was doomed to have to face all of these huge, big, scary decisions and well, I better not screw it up.
Because we all know where those people end up. And it's not living happily ever after in the suburbs.
And when I sat on the floor of our very cold Mongolian apartment with my cups of tea, usually still in my pajamas at 11 am because it was our day off, those very big life decisions felt like a huge, suffocating pressure.
As we would talk and process and dramatically wave our hands around to make our points, those decisions felt like I was being forced into one of two options.
I was being forced to either succeed at doing everything perfectly and making all of the right choices (forever and ever, amen) or to epically fail and end up a miserable, sad person wondering how in the world she had managed to screw up so completely.
Because that is the construct and narrative we so often hear.
The choices you make now impact the rest of your life.
The choices you make now in your life will shape everything you ever do from here on out.
I wish I had......when I was 20-something.
If I hadn't/had done......then I could have/wouldn't have.......
We create this story that being a young adult is in the only time you have control over the choices you make in your life. That once you make those foundational choices you can't ever make any other choices again.
I get that marriage is a choice that sets the tone and path for your life. I get that choosing a career defines certain things about what will come. I get that having children will change everything.
I get all of those things.
What I don't get is believing that once you turn 30 there is no more changing and choosing and choice-making to be done.
What I don't get is acting as if the 45-year-old sitting in the pew doesn't need discernment and prayer and wisdom and encouragement, just as much as the 23-year-old.
What I don't get is this perpetual sense that we are stuck by the choices that we make. That we do not worship a God who changes us, who calls us, who moves us, who shapes us, who challenges us every single day we awake.
I am starting to make those decisions. The ones the articles talk about. The choices about the future and careers and people and relationships and life.
But I am also remembering that I will need to make those choices each and every day of my life.
That I will awake and choose to be committed to the spouse that I marry.
That I will awake and choose to pursue God through the vocation of my calling.
That I will awake and choose to seek his will and direction for my life, no matter how settled it may seem.
That I will awake and choose to desire learning and changing and being shaped by my Creator.
That I will awake and I will continue to make those big, life-altering decisions each and every day.
And somehow, that makes it less scary.
There is less pressure when I know that I will make those choices today, tomorrow and the day after that.
It becomes more about living than getting it right.
It becomes more about growing than about staying the same.
And that my friends, is reason enough to start making choices that will just have to be made over and over again.
Because is a choice really a choice if it has no end?
1 comments:
Thanks for this insightful entry - it's very helpful to hear, especially as I have just been through a period of having to choose what I am going to do with the next year of my life and feeling like I am making some permanent, irrevocable, dramatic life choice.
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