Nobody told me.

    The older I get, the more time I spend growing up, the more I realize how much I just don't know. I'm told I'm very smart. Someone somewhere gave me that label and sometimes it goes to my head. But the more experiences I have in the Real World, the more I wish that label would go the heck away. I don't want people to think I'm the Smart One. Firstly, I hate stereotypes and every sub-label associated with them. Secondly, I know nothing.
    Absolutely nothing.
    Is my stupidity my own fault? Yes and no. I am very young and sheltered and give people a lot more room than I should. That's just me. I'm like that, and I'm only now starting to be okay with who I am.
    I could play the Blame Game. I could say that although I have an innately high level of respect for my elders, adults are full of contradictions. They tell you to grow up and act mature, but they don't tell you how. They hide all the secrets and uncertainty of Adulthood. Nobody tells you about the different kind of hard you experience when you start making your way on your own. Nobody tells you how often you have to compromise, and the heartbreak that comes along with difficult choices. Nobody tells you how much of a mess everything will be, how sometimes you feel like you are juggling flaming tennis balls while riding a unicycle, and just when things can't seem to be any more stressful, you can't run to your mommy with every issue. You have to just deal. You have actual responsibilities, accompanied by serious consequences and lots of grueling paperwork. Your parents aren't always going to be there to kiss it better, and you don't realize how much you loved their smothering until they can't smother you anymore and you have to miss it.
    Maybe the grown-ups told me. I probably didn't listen. Pubescence hits and you stop listening to adults until the adults no one listens to are your colleagues, your bosses, your aging relatives.
    You could say I'm complaining, but I am not. I am confessing. Confessing that I was wrong, that adulthood is not happily-ever-after and crimson sunsets and family dinners every night. It may look like that, but under the surface it's a mess of oxymorons, a gray place where people fall in and out of love and the monsters you thought lived in the dark of your childhood bedroom relocate to your head. It's plain hard. It's rough and mean, and the more you know the more you wish you didn't.
    "In much wisdom there is much grief, and increasing knowledge results in increasing pain." -Ecclesiastes 1:18. I like how even the Bible has something to say about the grief that comes with knowing. God knows. He's the only one who really understands everything. And if it pains me to know what little I know, then I cannot even fathom the heartbreak our Creator must experience. I want to be like God, to follow His example, but I do not want to be Him. Thankfully He sent His son to die for our sins, that I may not feel the unbearable weight of knowing, basking in the glory of Him and His extravagant love and grace instead.
    These are my thoughts. I am still growing, forever changing and learning. I have to be strong, able to learn the ugly alongside the beautiful. And if I am weak, if I crumble under the weight of evil in the world, then am I not like everyone else? Am I not just a confused young woman, both grateful and furious because nobody told me?
    I don't know. I really don't know. And I have to radically trust my heavenly Father to carry out His plans and continue to deliver me, even when what was black and white smudges gray.
--Laura :)