Aged.

Homecoming is tonight for my 9th grade girls. When I say 9th grade girls, I mean the girls I disciple for church who are in 9th grade.

 

Girls!

 

 

They’re all 10 years younger than me. This is a huge gap right now. They’re all on the cusp of womanhood, they’re all on the verge of adulthood – they are all on the edge of the rest of their lives. It seems strange, but somewhere in the middle of college, when adolescence is all you know, you begin to turn this corner into the rest of your life and you age. It is not longer getting older, but you ARE, in fact, OLDER and now you are aging. 

They know almost nothing about where I am in life. To them, it is all a strange visualization into the incomprehensible realm of maturity (not that I am DONE by any means… a fine wine needs a touch more aging than I’ve had). What is it anyway, that makes an adult an adult? What is the strange canyon that cannot be crossed between 15 and 25? It is a decades worth of experience, yes, but it is also a decades of worth of just being. I have been for 10 more years than they have. It is so strange.

And, I know almost nothing, anymore, about where they are. I only know where they are in relation to where I am now. When they think about first kisses – it is magical. When I think about first kisses, I think 7th grade choir camp with some sleeze named Gene who wore sun glasses and had a tongue like a slug… and from which I got the flu. I think reality.

When they think relationship, it looks something like “The Proposal”, “Twilight”, “Harry Potter” or something fictional, not their own. When I think relationship, I think marriage – and a million other references – my cousin’s marriage, my parents, my pastor, some of my friends, some wise long-lasting thoroughly difficult and real relationships. I have scraped almost every fictional relationship I ever knew. To me, they seem 1 dimensional, false, disingenuous. 

This is the first time that it has struck me that I am on my way to old. And, frankly, it is the most beautiful and exciting proposition. No, I don’t want my hearing to go or my face to crinkle like a over-soaked cucumber – but I do long for the incredible wholeness of knowing, of experiencing, of the maturity Christ grants through facing and persevering the hardest stages of life. 

At the same time – I love the beauty of youth, the excitement, the idealism, the joy and spirit of before the unknown. 

Tonight was probably one of the most enjoyable nights of my life, and I think – this is the church – a giant gap between the ages learning from and assisting each other in the on-going reality of youth and age – of – learning and wisdom.

The other wonderful thing – I joined a Bible Study that meets on Tuesday morning. Almost all of the women are 10 years older than me. We are friends. It is just an exciting thing to think that at some point these young ladies and I will brush very closely in life-stage, and that perhaps they will at some point, take on young women very much like themselves. Isn’t this the way of it? The constant renewal of knowledge. Love it.