Good morning…
My journal defined more of my twenty-five year old self on 5.1.88.
I wrote: “The process of continued growth leads to outgrowing certain people, certain places, certain beliefs as time passes. There is sadness in outgrowing. It means I can never go back and fit into the old shell in the same way again. The shell that used to fell warm, safe, and comfortable has begun to feel awkward, limiting, and heavy. There is also fear and uncertainty in outgrowing. It means I have to be naked and vulnerable for a while until I find my next shell, and still, when I finally arrive, it will take time for me to feel at home in the foreign space.
It takes time to make peace with a new environment, to gather one’s barrings, to take notice and experience the ‘warm spots’ in the unfamiliar water. I remember swimming in a lake as a kid and passing through a place where the currents came together to create a warm sensation for my skin. I had found a ‘warm spot’ in the midst of a cool lake. I felt like I wanted to stay there, to keep connected to the warmth, to bask in the comfort for a while. But I quickly learned that those spots move with the current and can’t be followed or contained. This is a force of Nature which is beyond human control. So, too, is the process of outgrowing.
Changing shells is part of life. The process of change is, and should be, unsettling. Out of my old shell and not yet into my new home, I feel at the mercy of the Current. I am always changing. Why should I not feel the turmoil of letting go of what used to feel good and the scariness of not knowing what is to come? Why should I expect to feel happy all the time when I feel rage at having comfort stolen from me by the natural aging process of life? Why should I pretend to feel only happy when, in actuality, I am grieving the loss of my first home?
My childhood home consisted of many fleeting ‘warm spots.’ I am thankful that I know what it feels like to be at home, to have roots, to settle in a safe spot, for when the feeling of home returns to me in different forms along life’s way, I will recognize its warmth and settle for a while. Yet, settling and staying are two different things, and I am called from within to leave the old shell and to learn to create a new home in a larger shell of God’s choosing, a shell which allows for my next phase of growth. Adulthood is scary with its responsibility, its accountability, its expectations, but it also exciting with its newness, its choices, its freedom to spread my God-designed wings to discover where they carry me.”
You’ve had a taste of God. Now, like infants at the breast, drink deep of God’s pure kindness. Then you’ll grow up mature and whole in God, 1 Peter 2:3 (MSG),
Sue
