(xaris and shalom)

I was talking with some teammates the other day about growing up.   It’s been far more difficult — and far better — than I expected.   As a child, I assumed that maturity was a threshold of sorts, and then I was somewhat disappointed and confounded as I got older to discover that it’s a slow (and often painful) process — not a magical transformation.   Andrew Peterson hit the nail on the head: After all these years,   I would’ve thought that all my fears were laid to rest But I still get scared And I thought that all my struggles would be victories by now But I confess That the mess is there.   (After All These Years) I found that adults often don’t feel particular competent and that nearly everyone has days when they want to crawl into a blanket fort and let the real adults deal with the problems of the world. Yet… although I certainly share in a nostalgic longing to return to the naïveté of childhood at times, I find myself increasingly grateful that