Beneath my shying away from the cold wet rain, I wish I could stand in the middle of street with my arms stretched wide open. The practical side of who I am takes over, not wanting to deal with the consequences of wet clothing or hair. Instead I dash from shelter to shelter avoiding the rain that I love. At what point in life do we stop being that girl who wants to dance around in the rain, without a care in the world to the women who seems to always have an umbrella in the car? Sure it’s not an overnight thing, more so a gradual process of trading those childlike things for adulthood.

I’ve been thinking about growing up a lot lately. The sermon on Sunday was geared towards parents. Sitting in my seat wondering if Id remember this Sunday someday when I have kids of my own. Wondering if I really could simply just tell my parents how I thought they could make better parents. This past week, no reason in particular I’ve been missing my family greatly (so much in fact that a country song about a father and daughter made me cry). Anyone knows that their parents are humans so they will screw up in parenting. That is something else I realized I traded when becoming an adult. I no longer solely saw my parents as these two people who would never let me down. Children should have that idea and comfort in their parents. But the older I’ve become it would almost be too great of an expectation to place on my parents expecting them to be same as they were to me as a child. They will not say the right things or do the right things every single time. Even so, I will still turn to them for advice on life because of the trust they have built in my relationship with them.

Officially, we are adults at age 18. Do our parents (or to many of my friends, as parents) have only that short of time to help form who we will be when we are no longer under their care? That really is a very short amount of time, I never really thought about how short of time that is. Just thinking back on how the early 90s don’t seem that long ago to me, but it was almost twenty years ago. I believe parenting doesn’t ever really stop, but the most dominate time of influence you have your childs life is those first 18 years or so. 18 they start to go off to college or find themselves as an adult (I was the ladder). The role of the parents doesn’t lessen, rather, changes roles. My parents are still my parents, but I turn to them for different things than I did even a year ago. Those small windows of time have different seasons of your child being a small baby to toddler to a 5 year old going on 30 to a teenager and so on. All of those times seem to pass by in a blink of an eye (so Ive been told) and during those times of savoring this blessing you are to train up your child in hopes you can give them all you want to offer them.

To all the parents out there, kudos to you. To those of you trying to start a family, you are so brave. To parents of grown children, we still carry a part of the small little one you still think of us as, even if our mask looks like an adult. To my parents, thanks for the love and support I know I have to still grown up in.