Slowing Down From 60

"I'm in a hurry to get things done, oh I, rush and rush until life's no fun, all I really gotta do is live and die, but I'm in a hurry and don't know why."

Being sixteen has made me think a lot about when I was little, because when I was little I had a lot of thoughts and imaginings that began with "When I'm sixteen I'll..." And very few of those statements have been found true, thus far. So much of my life has been spent fantasizing about the future. I'll be married at age twenty five, the mother of two by age thirty, maybe three by thirty five. And don't even get me started on college, I just want to skip through those four unpredictable and unknown years.

So wait, hold on a second. Isn't sixteen years old a pretty big year? So why am I constantly thinking about the future, constantly wishing my life away? What's the point in doing anything, if you only think about what you'll be doing years from now? It's time to take a breather and think about what I can do now. Who I can help, what new things I can try, who I'll meet, what effect I'll have on people's lives, how I deal with responsibilities.

I have to slow down, maybe even stop, and learn to live in the moment. 'Cause it's like the song says, at the end of this all, we are all going to die. It's true. Each and every one of us is going to die, and my hope is that the majority of us will end up in Heaven and eternal life with our Creator. But what about this years that we're given on Earth? I know that I don't want to spend my entire life just waiting to die. I want to have an effect on people here and now, I want to do great things right at this moment. I don't want to wait until I'm older, wiser, and more experienced. I want to make an impact right now. I want to enjoy these years, not wish them away.

I don't know about you, but right now I'm traveling sixty miles per hour down the most beautiful dirt road you'll ever find, and I need to slow down to see everything that I'm missing.

Passing on the Advice: Dating

For Christmas the leaders of the small group I attend at Church gave each of us a gift. It was a book, "Girl Talk With God" by Susie Shellenberger. This book is full of modern day conversations between a teenage girl and God. They are real, contemporary, and oh so easy to connect with. Though I haven't quite gotten through the entire thing yet, there is a lot of advice and a lot of truth in this book, some of it we don't want to face. It's from this book that I'd like to pass on advice about dating and relationships.

As a teenage girl, I am no stranger to how dating relationships work, and to the fact that they are all around me. I see couples all around me, happy couples, angry couples, good couples, bad couples, and a few just plain weird couples, and it is easy to wonder why I'm not involved in this dating scene, and I'm sure that I am not alone in this. I know that I would rather be with no guy at all than the wrong one, but often times I find myself wondering why that right guy, at least the right guy for this point in my life, hasn't come along. Why am I so different than so many of my friends?

This book, "Girl Talk with God", spells it out wonderfully. God is pointing out to the girl in the book that this boy that she's dating is not the right one for her, not for that moment in her life, and certainly not to marry, and He asks her to trust him with her love life. God says: "Trust that in My perfect timing, I will bring exactly whom I want in your life."

This goes for anything, not just dating relationships, or marriage, this goes for all kinds of relationships and scenarios. God has things under control, I promise you. He knows what He's doing, and even though sometimes we don't understand it, we have to do our best to trust that He is going to lead us in the right direction.

As any teenage girl, or any person, for that matter, the girl in the book responds to God conflicted. She wants to trust Him, and she knows that His timing is perfect, but, as she points out, God's timing isn't always as fast as we wish it to be. And to this worry, God replies simply: "But I'm never late."

Like the previous quote, this applies to practically everything in our lives. God knows what He's doing, and even when we wish He would hurry up with His plan, He is never, ever late. So take some time to breathe, and to trust in our Lord, that He has our lives under control, even when we think that all we do is wait.

God: "You don't have to do anything except be totally in love with me." This can be tough for some of us, taking a step back and allowing God to have total control, especially in a thing such as our love life. This means that we do not need to be constantly looking for a boyfriend, or girlfriend, because when God wants to bring someone into our life, He will, He doesn't need our help. God will handle it all, our only job is to fall so deeply in love with God that another person has to seek Him to find us.

This one last piece of advice from "Girl Talk with God" is probably the most difficult one to follow. God asks the girl: "What if I choose not to share you with a man?" and the girl replies: "I can't understand that, God." God: "I know. But with My strength you can accept without understanding." For many of us the idea that maybe God isn't planning a marriage for us can be scary, and as the girl points out, not easily understood. We won't understand everything that God has planned for us, it's likely that we won't understand most of what God has planned for us, but we aren't meant to.

So if God doesn't put someone in our lives, that doesn't mean that we are any less than someone who has a boyfriend or girlfriend, or than someone who is married. It simply means that He has a different plan in mind. Accepting that is difficult, and not possible to do by ourselves, but with our Lord's strength, He has made it possible. God loves us, and even when we don't understand, and even when we are waiting for what seems like forever, He hasn't forgotten us, He hasn't left us.