I remember when I was nine years old, standing out on the steps to the playground with Anni. I was eating my peanut butter crackers while she was eating her Oreos and looking thoughtfully out at the chaos before us. With a sigh, Anni turned to me and said, “I can’t wait until I’m sixteen. Then I’ll be almost grown up and be able to do all sorts of things and go all sorts of places on my own. I can’t wait to grow up.”
In that moment, I came to a very different conclusion: I realized my utter fear of growing up. That meant having to go to high school, then college. That meant moving away from home and not being able to crawl into Mom or Dad’s lap whenever I was scared of the road ahead. That meant being…alone.
Anni couldn’t wait to be king, while I wanted to fly off to Neverland.
Now sixteen has come and gone, and I’m here to tell you that I’m still afraid of growing up. I’m terrified of change and I tremble at the thought of the unknown. But time ticks away at an unstoppable pace and there is little I can do to change the inevitable. So what do I do? I tried turning the clock back, but the hour hand on my watch is stuck. I tried hiding under the covers and ignoring the things going on around me, but that didn’t last long. I tried shutting off all emotion and just marching ahead, but after three months, I finally broke down. Now I’m looking for another method by which to cope.
Everyone seems so excited to enter into this grand new world called college, but what about quirky, nostalgic teenage girls like me?
All that I can think to do now is to look back at where God has led me, and it doesn’t take long to realize that I’ve been here before. Not necessarily the same equation but the same formula, and the solution to this formula always seems to be found in the same way: on my knees. Every time I’ve been here--scared, afraid of what’s to come, and missing what’s behind--I’ve found that my hope is not in human comfort (as lovely as that is) nor is it in getting what I want (that usually doesn’t work), but in coming to a point of total humility before the Lord.
Every time I’m at this point, I find that I must relearn what it means to be content in any and every situation, and I am driven away from my own temporal solutions and to the powerful authority that is my Father’s Word. In my greatest weakness, I find that I am being made strong by the steady and constant hand of my Rock and my Salvation. He is my Refuge in the storm as well as my Pillar of Fire in the night, and although I long to be led out of each desert, I must first learn to content myself with simply being led. Like Charlotte Bronte’s Mr. Rochester, “My heart swells with gratitude to the beneficent God of this earth just now. He sees not as man sees, but far clearer: judges not as man judges: but far more wisely…You know I was proud of my strength: but what is it now, when I must give it over to foreign guidance, as a child does its weakness?”
Acknowledging this with all sincerity, I now find comfort in the words of Anna Waring:
Father, I know that all my life
Is portioned out for me,
And the changes that are sure to come
I do not fear to see;
But I ask Thee for a present mind
Intent on pleasing Thee.
In that moment, I came to a very different conclusion: I realized my utter fear of growing up. That meant having to go to high school, then college. That meant moving away from home and not being able to crawl into Mom or Dad’s lap whenever I was scared of the road ahead. That meant being…alone.
Anni couldn’t wait to be king, while I wanted to fly off to Neverland.
Now sixteen has come and gone, and I’m here to tell you that I’m still afraid of growing up. I’m terrified of change and I tremble at the thought of the unknown. But time ticks away at an unstoppable pace and there is little I can do to change the inevitable. So what do I do? I tried turning the clock back, but the hour hand on my watch is stuck. I tried hiding under the covers and ignoring the things going on around me, but that didn’t last long. I tried shutting off all emotion and just marching ahead, but after three months, I finally broke down. Now I’m looking for another method by which to cope.
Everyone seems so excited to enter into this grand new world called college, but what about quirky, nostalgic teenage girls like me?
All that I can think to do now is to look back at where God has led me, and it doesn’t take long to realize that I’ve been here before. Not necessarily the same equation but the same formula, and the solution to this formula always seems to be found in the same way: on my knees. Every time I’ve been here--scared, afraid of what’s to come, and missing what’s behind--I’ve found that my hope is not in human comfort (as lovely as that is) nor is it in getting what I want (that usually doesn’t work), but in coming to a point of total humility before the Lord.
Every time I’m at this point, I find that I must relearn what it means to be content in any and every situation, and I am driven away from my own temporal solutions and to the powerful authority that is my Father’s Word. In my greatest weakness, I find that I am being made strong by the steady and constant hand of my Rock and my Salvation. He is my Refuge in the storm as well as my Pillar of Fire in the night, and although I long to be led out of each desert, I must first learn to content myself with simply being led. Like Charlotte Bronte’s Mr. Rochester, “My heart swells with gratitude to the beneficent God of this earth just now. He sees not as man sees, but far clearer: judges not as man judges: but far more wisely…You know I was proud of my strength: but what is it now, when I must give it over to foreign guidance, as a child does its weakness?”
Acknowledging this with all sincerity, I now find comfort in the words of Anna Waring:
Father, I know that all my life
Is portioned out for me,
And the changes that are sure to come
I do not fear to see;
But I ask Thee for a present mind
Intent on pleasing Thee.
