Finally All Grown Up

When I was young, then a teenager and then in college, I thought being a grown-up would mean paying rent, driving, paying the utilities bill.

I figured I might someday have a house, have a husband and kids and read Essence magazine and like it, because those are the things my mother did. I'd buy groceries all the time, mow the grass and definitely have pets.

I never imagined that being a grown-up could mean realizing that, at this point in my life, there are doors of opportunity and experience that health, time and circumstance have forever closed to me.

And as it turns out, being grown-up also means facing the eventual certainty of death.

Over the past 18 months, I've had two surgeries, a biopsy, and now prepare to have a third surgery over the next few weeks that most likely won't kill me, but could also change my life forever.

All this for a person who at best, stumped her toe or caught a cold. I believed I would always be able to do anything I wanted when I got around to it. Wanna lose weight? Just get up and exercise. Wanna have kids? Just settle down with the right man and do it? Wanna travel around the world? Just save up and do it.

Nothing will ever be that simple for me again.

I'm 41 now, not 14, and while I was kinda right about the grown stuff - I do drive, own a house, pay utilities and have pets - I wasn't prepared to be alone and trying to figure out how to make sure I'll be okay.

After being told by my doctor about the need for the procedure that it hit me - I've wasted time.

I've wasted time waiting for someone I love to become worthy of that love. I've wasted time waiting for a world to improve that has no real incentive or desire to do so. I've wasted time worrying about the opinions of people who could care less about what I think. I've wasted time waiting for friends to remember to give as much as they take. I've wasted time believing that I was the only person, who really cared, tried, wanted, dreamed or suffered.

I'm done wasting time. Done believing that, apart from God, the calavry is coming around the bend. There is such joy in this world, and in my life that I've missed out on experiencing while I was thinking small and seeing the little picture.

That ends now. And just thinking about the possibilities of living life that way makes me so happy.

Mary Kay Ash once said:

"Some people drift through their entire life. They do it one day at a time, one week at a time, one month at a time. It happens so gradually they are unaware of how their lives are slipping away until it's too late."

In refusing to be one of those people, I'm taking true responsibility for the life God's given me.

Guess I am finally grown up after all.