10 Lessons

Today marks 5 years since I graduated college. That’s a little hard to wrap my head around. Apparently, it’s hard for others around me to wrap their head around too, for various reasons. On one side, a cashier informed me recently that I could open a credit card with her store if I was over 18. On the other, when I turned 27, my grandma made one of those faces that leaves you wondering if, perhaps, humans can get hairballs. When she found her words, she explained that 27 is, according to the laws of mathematics, very close to 30. We had to change the subject after that.

In my own estimations, however, thinking about age and calculating the time since “whenever” is becoming easier to swallow as the years go by. Possibly, this is because people in their 30’s (with whom I am very grateful to be able to associate as peers at last) are generally immensely more relaxed about life than those in their early 20’s. But it also may be simply because the Lord has been teaching me so much about gratitude recently, and all the counting leaves me in a place of awe that I’m still alive—still going—rather than leaving me in some sort of fearful self-implosion at the realization of how near I am to some decade milestone or other. And so, in the spirit of the gratitude I’ve been learning, I thought I’d take some time to reflect and share some of the things I’ve learned over the last 5 years, in this strange time of life that is the transition from college into the “real world,” as they call it. I hope this short list will be a blessing to you no matter where in the counting of years you find yourself.

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Lesson #1: There is no road map to “adulting.” Not really. Life after college is so much less scripted than all the years of schooling we faced before this. Part of realizing this means also realizing that there are no “rockstars” out here either. The secret that the adults rarely tell you is that they don’t know what they’re doing either. Even the seemingly “successful” ones are still unsure, guessing human beings. We’re all in the same boat, fumbling through a long list of quiet confusions, trying to figure it out.

It didn’t take me long after graduating to realize this. In fact, I may be cheating, because I think I began to learn this a few months before college even officially ended. And when I did begin to see it, my first reaction was anger and discouragement. You’re telling me this was all a sham? All the promises that a B.A. was what I really needed, that life would make sense and my calling would be clear? It was a joke? Are you kidding me? You’re all still confused and just couldn’t bother to be humble enough to admit that you haven’t figured it out?

There are times when I am still irritated that I don’t find many in the generations preceding me who are willing to admit that they, too, are still guessing. But what I’m learning is that this absence of a road map—this reality that we’re all guessing—is actually a beautiful thing. It means we’re working on a very level playing field. We’re all working to create art on a canvas framed by the circumstances we’ve been given. Yes, some of those frames are stranger and more confusing than others. But realizing that we’re all here doing our best to work on our own piece of art can be freeing. We don’t need to compare. There is no exact script to follow, no “nailing it” or “getting there.” The question simply becomes, “How can I love the Lord with all my heart and soul and mind and strength and love my neighbor as myself, right now, right where I’m at?”

Lesson #2: The environment you’re in plays a big part in who you become. I would have thought, being an Anthropology major, that I would have learned this in school. And I did, theoretically. But now I know from experience. We are shaped by what’s around us. If we think of the environments we exist in like a soup, we’re the veggies floating around inside. We influence our environment to some degree; but mostly, the longer we’re in there, the more we taste like whatever we’re in.

One of my favorite authors, Brant Hansen, discusses this in a chapter in his newest book, The Men We Need. He closes the chapter with the following mind-blower:

You’ve probably heard about the classic experiment by Solomon Asch from the 1950s. He’d ask a small group of people a very simple question using flash cards. When he would ask them individually about the lengths of the lines on the cards, they’d have no problem at all with the little quiz.

But in the small groups, there was a setup: Everyone but one person was in on the experiment. They would deliberately give the wrong answer, out loud, first. When the only “real” subject had to answer the simple question…it was no longer simple. In fact, 37 percent would get the answer wrong.

Even more amazing is what happened when another researcher followed up this experiment with a similar one, using functional magnetic resonance imaging machines to study brain activity. He expected to find that the subjects would have to use the part of their brain that helped them in social situations or to resolve conflict. After all, there was an obvious answer, but the other people weren’t giving it.

But the subjects didn’t use that part of the brain. When the others all said the wrong answer, the subjects simply saw the lines differently. Their perception of reality changed because of the people around them. That fast. (pp. 184-5, ellipsis and italics in original)

In the last 5 years, I’ve learned this, the hard way, twice. It can be brutal to have to face up to the ways we become like those we spend time with. Realizing we’re not immune from influence is a painful blow to our pride. But the lesson is an important one. As Brant concludes, “Choose the people around you, the people closest to you, wisely. You’ll become like them. Their thinking will shape yours. They will help you order—or disorder—your values and desires. They will affect your attitude toward life itself. Do not underestimate this. They will change who you become” (185).

Lesson #3: One of the reasons people stay in toxic or abusive situations is because they fear that getting out might be even worse. This might sound illogical to you. But it is a real struggle. I’ve seen it a few times in the past few years in others, but mostly I’ve seen it in myself. It is astonishingly easy to stay put in something you know is killing you because you know that you’ve survived, at least, up to this point. You don’t know if you’ll survive getting out. So you stay.

I mention this for two reasons. First, if you know someone stuck in something because of this kind of thinking, maybe it can help you relate. Maybe it can help you realize how you can step in to meet them with hope. But second, if you find yourself thinking this, I mention it so that you can hear this truth from the other side of the struggle: Getting out is worth it. There is life available. You can thrive, not just survive. It might be hellish for a time to have to cut off whatever is sucking your life out, but then there will be peace. You’ll hear the voice of Jesus: “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:29-30, NIV 1984). He isn’t joking. His rest is real.

Lesson #4: Movement and nutrition can make a world of difference in your life. I hardly thought of this in college. I was just trying to make it through all the homework. But, man, life is better on the other side. I am learning how to listen to and care for my body. I am learning that doing so allows me to actually feel well (what a concept). I am learning that practicing a physical skill yields a result of improvement over time, and this helps encourage me that the time I spend building into the less-visible areas of my life (areas like patience, openness to others, and prayer) will yield a result over time too. I am having a ton of fun in the kitchen, and I’m loving the spaces where both movement and food can be places to connect with God and with others.

Lesson #5: Sunshine and walks in nature are really beautiful things. Almost every morning for the last five years, I have woken up to the sight of gentle morning light gleaming through tree branches that are twisted into the shape of a heart. I’m not kidding. That’s really what’s outside my bedroom window. I’ve also walked along the same paths at my favorite nature reserve more times than I can count. My footsteps have been retraced with the whole spectrum of emotions; sometimes I nearly skip in boundless joy and laughter, and other times I tread in grinding anger or overwhelming grief. But the sun is always there, even if it is sometimes behind clouds. Jesus meets me there too. Sometimes I see birds. Sometimes I see myself. And I’m grateful for it all.

Lesson #6: Spiritual warfare is a real thing, and probably the most important aspect of all of it is staying centered in truth. I wrote about this to some extent in the “Part 2” of my testimony (The Silent Years). But even beyond that, the Lord has used these last five years as training ground for war in a battlefield far more important than the struggles we face in the visible realm. I’m learning how to pay attention to the spiritual world, how to take care to protect my mind and my apartment from spiritual garbage, how to recognize the enemy’s lies, and how to sweep them out with truth. I’m not an expert. I won’t pretend to be. But I am confident that the Lord’s been training me, and if I can leave you with any tip in all this, it’s exactly what I said above: Stay centered in truth. Dig into the Word of God, by which I mean both Scripture and Jesus. Believing lies is crippling, and it’s as risky in the spiritual world as leaving rotten food is in the natural world if you suspect there might be a posse of rats nearby. 

Lesson #7: Operating without hurry is wildly freeing. Turns out, life is a lot more peaceful when you’re not rushing around everywhere. John Mark Comer’s The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry and Dallas Willard’s The Divine Conspiracy have both been hugely instrumental in reorienting my life in this regard. When asked once by John Ortberg, “What do I need to do to become the me I want to be?”, Willard paused and, afterward, simply said, “You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life.” John took a note and asked, “What else?” Willard replied, “There is nothing else. Hurry is the great enemy of spiritual life in our day. You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life” (The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, p. 19). 

I’ve started a new habit, trying to put what I’ve been learning into practice. Every time I feel the pressing temptation to hurry, my response is to ask, “What would happen if I did not do (or even just postponed) this thing that is causing hurry in my soul? What changes can I make in myself, my atmosphere, or my schedule to ruthlessly eliminate hurry from my life?” The result: My soul is thanking me, and I’m sure the people around me are too. I’m a different person when I’m not hurried and worried, pressed for time and distracted by a million things. Ruthlessly eliminating hurry is a practice I definitely intend to continue.

Lesson #8: Wisdom is knowing what is best, knowing what to prioritize in any given situation; and knowing what is best is life-changing and grounding. I can recall spending day after day sitting on my floor in my bedroom thinking, “I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know what’s important in life. I don’t know how to make decisions on any of the matters pressing on my mind because I don’t know what’s valuable. I don’t know what matters most. And it doesn’t seem like anyone around me does either.” (Shall we go back to Lesson #2?) 

Living without the direction of wisdom is like living in free-fall. Even in my aimlessness, I knew that James said, pretty clearly, “If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him” (1:5). I tried asking God. I asked for a long time. It took me forever to realize that He had already given it.

There were, I suppose, two truths here for me to learn: 1) Scripture contains the wisdom I need to know what my life direction should be, and it’s not vague; and 2) Sometimes if I feel like I’m not hearing the Lord, the best thing to do is to ask whether I listened the last time He spoke. That latter insight was given to me courtesy of my Hebrew teacher (yes, cheating again…that was during college). But the point: I hinder my own ability to hear the wisdom and truth of Scripture when I don’t live in obedience. But when I decide to read God’s Word with the intent to listen and obey it, things get a whole lot clearer. I may not have the answer to every question, but I have enough to know how to take the next obedient step. He provides my daily bread.

Lesson #9: The two qualities I find myself needing more and more in life are humility and play. This could, perhaps, be summed up by saying that I continually need a softer heart. I need a heart that is aware of my own tendency toward pride and willing to lay that down, repeatedly. I need a heart that is unwilling to throw stones at others because I know I’ve been in their shoes. I need a heart that is anchored in the unfading joy of Jesus. I need a heart that is childlike, a heart that doesn’t have anything to prove. I think life’s sweet spot is found in the moments when we realize we have absolutely nothing to offer and are loved right there. We are loved just as we are, and we get to smile and be creative from that space. How freeing a realization that is.

Lesson #10: The goodness of God is deeper, wider, wilder, and more magnificent than I ever realized; and I’ve barely had a taste. I said at the beginning of this post that counting years has grown less overwhelming as I’ve gotten older and that the reason for that was that the Lord has been teaching me the rhythms of gratitude. I am learning that sometimes blessing is more overwhelming than hardship. I need the Lord’s help to even touch His goodness because He is so good that a mere touch could incinerate me. Moses encountered God, and his face glowed. His physical body couldn’t handle the goodness that passed by him. There have been nights where I have been overwhelmed to the point of exhaustion at the Lord’s goodness to me, where I couldn’t sleep and couldn’t move as tears streamed down my face—and I have seen far less than Moses. I don’t understand it. I can’t summon enough intellect or heart to grasp it. But I look at the wild goodness of God in the small increments that He has let me see, and I am amazed.

I want to grow into a person that can handle tasting more of His goodness. I’m praying for that. And in the meantime, I’m so thankful for what I get to see. I see more now than I did five years ago—more than I ever thought possible. 

On May 2, 2017, three days before I graduated, I journaled the following: “Tick, tick. Every beat of the clock is another step closer to the moment where life gets flipped on its head. 3 days, and I become whatever I am without the wrappings of all that I’ve done. They say change hurts sometimes but life keeps rolling on, and as dizzy as I feel and as odd as the end is, I gotta keep keeping on.”

Five years later, I’m glad I did. It’s worth keeping on. So in the famous words of the unicorn in C.S. Lewis’ The Last Battle, let’s keep going, “further up and further in!”