Time is a curious thing. It is the thing that we all worry about the most, complain about often and never spend right. Some days it goes by too slow. Some days it goes by extremely fasts. A week will drag on but the entire month with fly by. One year, you are old enough to have a sweet 16 (or go out for Cuban food...that's happiness) and the next year you are 21 and able to order drinks at lunch.
We fight for time. Time with people. Time with places. What time to move. What time to drive. Who we want to spend time with. Who we can't stand spending time with. How much time we put into something. How much time we get on break. Time. Time. Time.
Our time is paid in hours and those hours add up quick. On days off, we sleep time away to prepare for the number of hours we will have to work the next week. We never have enough time to complete anything but always have too much time until the next promotion.
We fly with it. Drive with it. Cook with it. Celebrate it. But how do we accomplish it?
It's a given that if you live long enough, you will pass away. Not on your time, but God's. If you don't believe in God, I hate to tell ya, but you are still apart of God's plan, the only difference is you don't give him credit for what he does. So if we are all on our own time, yet nothing happens until God's time, how do we accomplish what we are called to do?
First thing, patience. Time does not work on your clock. The sun does not rise and set for you. When you want to sleep at 1pm in Georgia, the sun is going to be out. You don't get to automatically make the world stop just so you can accomplish something you have put off for months.
Patience stretches further than selfishness. Patience with people is a strong thresh hold to accomplish. Once you figure out that people do not work on your personal time, life becomes easier. Actually, this is the first way to cancel out laziness. If you understand that the people around you run on their own perspective of time, you will learn to accomplish what you can on your perspective of time. It gets done exactly when you want it to. Waiting on someone else's time perspective will leave you in frustration. It's not their fault and they usually don't mean it on purpose, but they have a different time line for your task than you do.
Second thing...realize time changes everything. I am not the same person as I was when I was 18. Hopefully, you can say the same. That means you have grown. Yes, you will, in general, have the same standards of life, understanding of who you are and how you function successfully in society. However, everything else changes.
Your mindset shifts. I thought it wasn't possible because I KNEW who I was at 18. Now, at 21, I couldn't have been more wrong. I was incredibly closed minded and focused on nothing but myself. Everything revolved around boys. Being single was shameful. Getting a tweet from a celebrity meant I was almost famous. Deleting an instagram account was the closest thing I had experienced to life shifting changes. Running 10 miles around Savannah at 9pm (alone) was safe.
I couldn't have been any more ignorant. I have realized that taking a year off from dating is not a life altering, significantly long amount of time in the overall account. Being single is actually really enjoyable. Yes, you have down days where you want what you see everyone else having, but mostly, it's a lot of fun. Rubbing elbows with celebrities is just like rubbing elbows with your friends. They are real people with real life jobs, problems and laughter. It doesn't get you closer to fame but it does get you closer to impacting more people than you may have had a chance to before.
From 18 to 21, you start to learn your craft, work in your career, pay your own bills, manage your own money and make your own life your own. You learn to take care of and accept yourself. The way you communicate shifts significantly. The people you hang out with and accept are the same ones you judged and swore you would never be friends with just years before.
Third. Time with yourself. This is probably the most important thing I have learned and accepted as I have grown. Spending time alone. When I was 19, nothing was more uncomfortable and embarrassing than walking into a coffee shop, store or mall alone. To me, it screamed desperate, lonely and not happy. Of course, I did get a lot of free mexican food because of it. It's the little things in life...
Now, I love being home. I love sitting in a book store for hours, alone. I love walking malls, eating meals out and watching movies alone. I am comfortable with who I am. I am not living for anyone else but myself. I spend hundreds of hours a month working with incredible people, but I can only do that because I have finally figured out the importance of being alone. I don't shut people out. I love to go hiking and being active with friends, but I'm content when they are not around as well.
This mind set came to me after several hours in traffic on the Sunday after Thanksgiving. Well, it didn't come to me then, but it put my life and relationships in perfect perspective.
Being single is looked down on. At least, its what girls look down on when they are single. Even as I type this, I have over heard three separate conversations between girls about the guys they like that don't like them back...or about the "b****" of a girl who "stole" him from her. This period of time in a girls life seems to last forever. Yet, when they are 40 and look back on life, being single will have flown by.
Anyways. I was listening to a youth minister from Newspring Church speaking to the adult congregation about his time being single and all that he had learned. It was a pretty typical message about life, love and waiting. To be happy when you are single and start preparing for the future with funds, fitness and purity. If you are a Christian, it has all the same messages as most. At least I thought. It wasn't until the second half of the message that it all came into perspective, all because of one question...
Do you believe you are called to be married?
Simple question, right?
Apparently, it was for most girls. A staggering amount raised their hands saying, YES, God has called me into marriage. Guys too. Hands everywhere are each one KNOWING that that was a calling in their lives.
Me. I was driving down 285 and realized I couldn't confidently say that my calling involved marriage. One day, yeah, sure, I guess. If I find someone then, yea, I don't see why not. I would love the suburbia, two kids, a few animals and soccer matches on the weekend life. However, I could not say yes.
Sure, I would enjoy having someone to be with, especially a boyfriend that is my best friend. However, I can't imagine having one either. Not now. Not with life how it is. I am 21. I have an amazing family. I have just started my career. I hang out with 40 of the coolest guys in the world on a daily basis. I get to cuddle with a kitten every night. I get to eat late night buckets of ice cream, in oversized sweaters, reading a book with Emmie (kitten) passed out beside me, wrapped in the aroma of fall candles.
Time has made me realize, this is life. This is what I am, who I am and what I want to be. I have grown. I have changed. I have learned to love, dream, work and believe in everything being possible. I've accomplished extreme amounts and failed just as often, only to learn the right ways to do things. I've accepted who I am and love being who I am. I am not bitter, sad, or against being single.
And most of all...I have accepted time. Time changes everything. It causes people and things to grow. There is never enough of it in a day but too much of it in an hour. The sun will constantly set without my approval. It will always rise sooner than I wanted but too slow when I expect it. Time will change my thoughts into actions and those actions into memories. It will change my days into months and my months into years. I will never be any younger than I am now but I will always be growing older. Time doesn't stop on our own accounts. The right timing for you is the wrong timing for them. But the wrong timing for you is the perfect timing for them. The only time that constitutes as a constant is God's time, yet it is incomprehensible to us how his time is calculated and what it must hold. Which is why, through everything time teaches us, trust is always the most important.
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