The Hard Twenty-Somethings: When Will My Life Begin?

In 2010, Disney introduced us to a new princess who was being adding to the crew: Rapunzel. The very first musical number in the film starts with Rapunzel stuck in her tower doing the same thing she's been doing her entire life just wishing wondering about when her life will start:

"....Stuck in the same place I've always been. And I'll keep wonderin' and wonderin' And wonderin' and wonderin', when will my life begin?"

I live in a small town in the middle of nowhere in Northern Maine (I guarantee 98% of America has no idea where Presque Isle is) and I'm only turning 21 this year. To anybody else that's pretty young still and I have my whole life ahead of me, but for me I have days where I feel like Rapunzel. When is my life going to begin? When will I finally graduate college? When will I finally get my "dream job"? When will I finally meet "the One"? I'm so anxious to finally get on with my future and move past this mundane life of being a twenty-something from a small town that I'm missing everything in front of me right now!

As I have started to read through one of my professor's books, "The Hard Twenty Somethings" he stuck in a good reminder that what happens now in my twenties sets the stage for the rest of my life: what I do, how I act and the decisions I make. But I'm finding that it's really hard!

(Uh duh....that's why it's called "The Hard Twenty Somethings".)

Why is it so hard to accept that God is always going to put me in seasons that I don't want to be in some times? It's because I have control issues; yup I'll admit it! I hate being in this zone of the unknown and feeling completely in the dark about what my future holds because I want control. I want control so bad  that all I want is to escape these "little town blues" and I forget about the impact I could be having on the people I work with, my youth group, and people I interact with daily and all the things I could be accomplishing right now while I'm in this zone.

Life as a twenty-something is starting to seem hard (really hard!), but when I think about it this is only the beginning of the unexplainable, unavoidable season of hard that I'm going to face more than once.

And to this season of hard I say bring it on!