When Love Shows Up - Growing Up - The Rev. Philip DeVaul

I have a confession to make. I love being an adult. I get to stay up past my bedtime. I get to drive a car. I have to work, sure, but I also get to work - get to do something I love and learn how to get better at it. I will never have to take another math test, never get another detention. Sure, I went bald, but now I don't get hat hair. I get to have a beard. I watch R-Rated movies. I eat my kids' Halloween candy after they go to bed. I have two dogs! I had one and wanted another one, so I got another one! It was a terrible idea, but it was my terrible idea and all I had to do was be willing to live with the consequences! I didn't much like being a kid, to be honest. It's not like I had a bad childhood. I wasn't trying to escape. But from a very young age, I believed that I would enjoy being an adult so much more. And then I grew up and I was right. This is what I've been waiting for. All the stressors I described before are still true. It's very very difficult, this adulting. But I love it. I love being grown-up. It's painful and it's scary. I both laugh and cry more readily than I ever did as a child. It's all more terrible and beautiful than I ever could have imagined. I know our culture is obsessed with youth; that we are programmed to look backward and yearn for an idealized version of who we once were, to long for younger bodies and simpler times. I do it too. Some of it is about being scared of death. Some of it is wishing we could have had the ability to comprehend back then just how precious time was when everything seemed endless and ageless and eternal. And some of it is the legitimate annoyance that if I sleep wrong tonight, I will be sore for three days.