It's a strange feeling realizing just how much growing up I have done at different points in my life. Many times, it seems to happen all at once, rather than gradually (as I had always expected it to). For instance, my mother's death forced me to grow up very quickly in order to help out around the house more, and look after my siblings every day. I didn't get to make that transition gradually at all.
Now? I'm moved into an apartment, no longer on a school meal plan. I have to buy my own food and figure out how to cook things. I had two appointments with new doctors last week, finally transitioning away from my pediatric doctors. It was really the first time I had gone to a doctor without my father accompanying me. But I took it all in stride, and some minor anxiety aside, it all went very smoothly.
Growing up used to seem terribly frightening to me. The big, scary world wasn't something I wanted to face by myself. There are still so many things about it that I don't know how to handle, or that I simply don't understand. But I've come to realize that I will never be "ready" to face any of it. When I was a kid, my father threw me into the shallow end of the pool, after several years of trying to teach me to swim. I had never felt "ready" to learn. By getting thrown in, without warning, I had to learn quickly. I had no choice. But I learned, and despite a lasting fear of deep water (but I think I had that before this incident), the lesson stuck.
So I'm going to try to stop waiting for the moments when I'll be "ready" for things. When the time is "right", I'll be thrown in without warning, and I'll have to figure it out on the spot, just like everyone else. Looking back and thinking about all the times where I've already conquered those "sink or swim" moments, the future feels less frightening.
~*~
When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.
1 Corinthians 13:11
