Adult-ing.

So it's somewhere abouts 11:30 PM on a Saturday night and I'm sleeplessly searching my pinterest feed for "30 ways to challenge yourself" and "20 things women should do in their 20s" kind of lists.. You know, the one's that challenge you to be a better person and all that stuff. Should I be asleep? Yes. But sometimes sleep is a lost thing that I can only yearn for-- and laying here in the dark isn't as productive as many other things like yours truly (writing.)

So here's to late-night pinteresting and late-night blogging and here's to an over-tried myself and the fact that I'm turning twenty in just about three short weeks.

I was asking the other day why 21 is the oh-so-big number instead of twenty.. Apparently pretty much all the more that happens when you turn 21 is that you can drink- "well, whoop-de-doo!" This knowledge not really applying to me, I must admit that 20 itself is the cute little, awesomely-humongous number that sends shivering thrills up and down my body. T-W-E-N-T-Y, friends. That number sounds so incredibly adultish (perhaps because it is, in fact, adultish- and I shall have to adjust myself soon enough to adultishly match the number).. and every day I find my self adult-ing more and more in a rather alarming fashion. I can't say that's a wholly bad thing though. Actually, despite the terrifying-ness of it's existence, this adultish-ness in me I have to admit I rather enjoy.

Things like being a Sunday school teacher for the first time- planning out games and fun songs to teach the kids// preparing a lesson and baking cookies to treat my class. We even had a missionary guest in to teach the lesson and it felt so odd afterwards to be the one saying "Thank you so much for teaching, I think the kids really enjoyed it!", shaking hands cordially and trying hard not to betray how misplaced I felt (Aren't I still a kid? Wasn't it literally yesterday I remember sitting in class too?)

Being a legal driver for the first time. Turning the wheel with giddy excitement and feeling astonishingly easy with the movement of the wheels under me. Isn't this just Midtown Madness once again? (An old driving computer game we used to play- going 150 miles an hour and crashing into streetlights and mailboxes everywhere.) No, this is real life.


And yet, it's not an all at once thing either. I'm not all of the sudden grown-up with no warning. (Neither am I wholly grown up yet) I can trace the ever-widening streak of changes and changes in my life back through this summer, through my freshman year of college, through my jobs before that. Each tweak to my existence pulling me further and further from who I used to be-- and bringing me closer and closer to who I shall become; am becoming. The night before the funeral of an old-old family friend of ours, pretty much an adopted grandmother to my siblings and I. Surely I bid goodbye to a piece of my childhood that night through the tears?

And college? College broke me to pieces sometimes! How shockingly different from all I had expected in some ways... I didn't know I could make such amazing friends-- I didn't know friendship could be so confusing-- I didn't know some people would be so easy to influence. I didn't know I could make such a difference. I hardly realized the parts of me I would see mirrored by the friends I chose- parts of me I didn't even know existed.

Each fear I've faced, though I didn't see it then and I'm not sure I see it yet, must have molded me. Each foolish happy thing I threw myself into must have opened some little bit of my personality, never again to be contained.

I was crazy you guys. Undeniably, blissfully crazier than I've ever been before in my life. We may or may not have sat with our feet dipped into water fountains (along public walkways), gone ghost-hunting around an abandoned campus an hour before dawn, ran barefoot in the rain on a drizzly Sunday night after church,  danced our hearts away to Christmas fairy-lights, and a million other clandestine sparkling activities.

I've felt my heart stretched out to the accomplishing of things I never thought I could do. Through a bus ministry and children that I cried for// prayed for// laughed with// sang with// and even now the pictures of those times break my heart into a million pieces. How do you see such hurt and confusion in lives and leave them still the same-- trying, but feeling you could do nothing?

Being nineteen years old has surely been an adventure in many many senses of the word. And adult-ing? Yes, I've learned a whole lot of things about adult-ing this year. And in 3 weeks I'll be twenty and my adventure will continue. But a new adventure this time, different. Terribly different.

And now the clock is screaming to me that I've been an hour at my keyboard hammering- and perhaps now sleep will resign itself to blessing these eyelids of mine. If not? there's some stars outside my window that could always use a little gazing-at. So I bid you all-goodnight.

And don't think me too weird for all the rambling. I'm a slave to the fingers that let these thoughts out of my brain. (Or something like that. FORGIVE ME- I'm slightly tired.)