Everybody's got their stuff. I've got mine, you've got yours, we've all got ours. And I'm not just saying 'stuff' because I'm afraid of saying 'sh*t' - everybody's got their 'sh*t' too, but that means something different that what I'm meaning here. People try to hide their 'sh*t' in the closet and not let anyone know they wear it; people like to wear their 'stuff' out in the open and show it off because they're proud of it.
So that's crystal-clear. Our stuff is what engages us, what we enjoy doing, what receives our energies. Like a guy with a couple of cars out in the yard he's always fixing up. Or a girl who's always trendy and fashionable and knowledgeable about clothes. The football fanatic. The amateur gourmet. (Sure, these are a little stereotypical, but you get the idea.)
The thing about stuff is that it's not our life. Life doesn't consist of stuff. Life has to be somewhere else, something else. I find it extremely freeing to think about the things I think cause people to think of me (Joe, the guy who does this, Joe, the guy who's into that) and say, "that's my stuff". It's not my life, it's my stuff. Very freeing.
I have to be reminded of this frequently or I start to believe otherwise. Life quickly becomes suffocating when it starts to consist of stuff. Unfortunately, I think this cuts both ways. Do you feel suffocated when you get around certain people? It's not that you don't like the person, it's that they pull out their stuff and hold it up as though their life consisted of it. It can also be such that they measure your life as if it ought to consist of it as well. This is even more suffocating. Either that, or just saddening. What a sad little person, they can't see beyond their stuff.
Thank God for seasons and growth and for him being sovereign and owning everything. He'll grow me and free me out of these obsessions. Otherwise life would be a perpetual "bleak midwinter", wouldn't it?
In-Between-ness
I'm 28 years old. To some this probably sounds pretty old (probably to most in a college town), and to some pretty young. So while I can play a game of soccer without being sore for the entire week following, I think you can spot some of the gray in my hair from across the room. Weird.
Feels pretty in-between to me. And that's just the physical aspect. I haven't even gotten into the maturity part yet. That's the real kicker. Feeling like I can see pretty clearly how immature I am, yet lacking in resources to do much about it decisively. This is where the connection to the 'stuff' thoughts come in (for those of you who were hoping there was some continuity to this post): shouldn't I be old enough to not keep falling for the lie that my life doesn't consist of stuff? I think Kathryn made a comment the other day that maturity and age don't necessarily accrue at the same rate (I've lost the exact context and also her exact words, and possibly also the gist of what she was saying, but obviously this is what I took away from the conversation). I think that must be true. I've met some pretty immature old people. Oh for grace to not become one. (Or to bear it with good humor...)
I'm guessing other young adults would feel similarly. (Or whatever label or category you'd put to us.) The feeling that you ought to be capable of so much more sanity, stability, responsibility and such, but really you're barely taller than knee-high to a grasshopper when you use the adulthood-measuring-stick.
I certainly feel it today. It feels like irony: at times when I take more responsibility, the blindness is removed from my eyes to how much more is waiting to be took. As if the purpose of responsibility is to alert me to how much I'd been fooling myself. Again, without good humor, I think I'd be likely here to want to "curse God and die" - but it's much healthier to have a laugh even though the joke's on me.
Oh, and faith. In those moments when all that I'm called to do and be seems way past my ability to time-manage or deal with maturely or accomplish while 'doing it justice', I need to have a way of pushing beyond despair and trusting God for more than I'm able to accomplish.
It seems then that faith bridges the age-gap and makes it okay to be in-between.
