Growing Up

Before I Grew Up

I thought growing up was difficult.

I thought becoming completely independent was hard.

I thought getting through life so far was hard.

But this past week I have decided that helping, watching, and guiding others grow up is much more difficult than it ever was for me to grow up.

Some things are still hard. Learning to be an awesome wife is hard. Learning to help best friends through tragedies is hard. Watching people you love get older is hard. When people and animals you love die, that is hard.

This week my best friend had to tell her children that she and their daddy would not be married much longer. It ripped my heart out when she told me how it hurt them.

This week a dear friend of mine ended his life. I was and still am devastated.

My husband and I are in the process of trying to sell his car. It will no longer start so we are becoming a one car family. This is new and thus difficult.

But I had an experience that revealed a new lesson to me. My friend who passed was a church member at my home church. I was a youth group leader there and worked in the nursery with youth volunteers. Some of these kids and I developed close friendships. This kind of thing happens when you get all get puked on, spilled on, hit by and cried on by babies and toddlers.

I knew I would be headed back home for a memorial service and told this kid, who was a kid when I met him. He is now heading off to college to become a world changer and is legally an adult. He asked me how this person we both knew died. I thought about not telling him or only telling him partial truths. I decided though on telling him the truth. That our friend took his life. A man we both talked to every Sunday and laughed with and cared for.

He is an adult though. He can know the truth, plus in the small town we are from, I am sure he will hear the truth. But I had this experience of not knowing the right thing to do. Nothing I could have said would have been right, necessarily, but things I could have said would most certainly have been wrong.

I realized that maybe growing up is harder when it is not you growing up. Maybe growing up is most difficult when it is people you love who are going through things you wish they did not have too experience. But unfortunately our world can be cruel and quite wicked.

I thought growing up was hard, but I am now pretty certain that watching, guiding, and helping others grow up can be just as difficult. And perhaps a part of all of us still growing up too.