Confession: I had false expectations about life in my twenties.
Ok, first, I’d like to preface this by recognizing that yes, I am only a couple of years into my twenties. But, before some of you dismiss me, hear me out.
For 21 years, I’ve lived a pretty cushy life. I have an awesome family, dear friends, I had a lovely childhood and the awkward years were fairly kind. That being said life has also been far from perfect. There have been some really low lows, some dark days and some really hard times. But even in the midst of the most broken pieces of life, God’s grace has been much greater.
Now, back to those expectations. Like I said, as broken as life can be, I think I got dealt a pretty good hand. I genuinely thought I would graduate high school, go to college, have an awesome job, meet the love of my life, get married…yada, yada, yada. In my sunshine and confetti world, life was going to be grand.
You can call it optimism, a stroked ego, a sheltered childhood…whatever you will. But I have a feeling it’s not just me. I think most of us in our twenties would agree that life is not as dreamy as we always thought. It sounds glamorous, right? We’re adults so we have a smidge of responsibility, but we’re also young with as much freedom as we want. Life can just about be as risky or as sure as we please, and we think we can breeze through it without a care.
Now, here I sit. I’m 21, I’m only halfway through college because I’m on the “slow yet steady, gaining life experience” track, I’m not even close to dating anyone and I’m sitting here alone at 2am on a Saturday night (technically Sunday AM..?) blogging and wondering if I have any queso left in the fridge. Can you say LOL? This is way off track from what I thought being 21 would be like. Not to mention, who the heck eats queso at 2am? Apparently I do.
I’ve determined, though, that I’m not going to let these false expectations disappoint me. Instead, I’m simply going to change my expectations. After all, we’re at the beginning of a new year: 2016, baby! Instead of living with the expectation of life in my twenties being grand and magical, I want to live with the expectation that for now, for this season, life in my twenties (and let’s be real, probably the rest of my life) is going to be about learning to intentionally live in God’s presence.
Recently, one of our teaching pastors at church shared this idea that as we walk in a relationship with Emmanuel (God with us), we should look at it as much more than just lots of isolated moments with Him, more than keeping His law, more than dedicated service to Him…not that any of that is bad or wrong. But I think that this idea of living with God looks a little different than how I think most of us were taught our Christian walk should look like. I think we’ve been doing ourselves a disservice by treating our walk with God like a separate compartment from the rest of our life. For a girl who grew up in the Church, I’ve never really had it explained to me like this before. I’ve been told that God is with me, He is for me, He died and rose to wash my sins away, He will never leave me…all of those things that He is and has done and my response is to worship, glorify and serve Him in all that we do. Which are all good, true things! Don’t get me wrong here…but for me to INTENTIONALLY live WITH God, on a day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute basis is such a refreshing way to look at it. And here I am a week later already feeling like I’m struggling to live like this already…which is why we’re called to live by His strength and not ours, right? Aye yai yai…
David shared this, straight from his heart that had a burning desire to live in the presence of the Lord:
One thing I have asked from the LORD, that I shall seek: That I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the LORD and to meditate in His temple. (Psalm 27:4, NASB)
This is my prayer. My new expectation for life as a twenty something: that I would seek the presence of the Lord all the days of my life. Then the good times, the hard times, the LOLs and the late night queso munchies might not feel so disappointing. They might simply feel like God, in His abundant grace, is WITH me, which is much more than I deserve.