LET THE CONCRETE DRY
I wrote this one several years ago, but have found it refreshing to revisit every once in a while. It’s also fun to watch my writing style change slowly overtime.
I’m 21 in writing this. It is safe to say I am young, and much of my life is still ahead of me if I live an average life expectancy. So why do I feel such a hurry? My contemporaries also share this feeling, as if we should get well paying jobs, spouses, and have profound impact for the Kingdom of God, and we need to do it all before we go to sleep tonight. But when I consider my heart and scripture, what do I see? What do I feel?
I feel hope, and there is an invitation inward to grow in my person beyond any invitation to external achievement. To grow, as Jesus did during his formative years, “in wisdom and stature, favored by God and man.” (Luke 2.52). Being in my early 20’s, I sense much more of an invitation to grow than to accomplish. And growth, I’m beginning to believe, cannot happen well in the environment of hurry.
I find it helpful to imagine the whole of my life as a house. However, I was not born with a house, only a nice plot of land. I didn’t chose my plot, where it is, what it looks like, but regardless, it’s mine. And in my childhood and adolescence, that’s most of what I had: land. Through my parents and community, much of my land was explored, tamed, and prepared for the life ahead. However, at the turn of the third decade, it was time for something new: a foundation.
When I turned 20, I was full of ambition. I was ready to live all of life in two years. I was sure that my internal world was “wildly mature and complete”. That is no longer the case. A year and a half after my 20th birthday, my perspective on my 20’s has shifted radically. I have seen a new vision, been given a new desire, and it’s quite simple. I want to pour concrete, and let it dry.
I want to live a beautiful, loving, giving-of-myself life. I want to share a joyful and beautiful marriage with a wonder of a wife. I want to have and love kids with my everything. I want to give myself to a career and do it better than anyone else. I want to see so much of the world, climb all of its mountains and experience all of its culture. But I’m now realizing that I cannot rush into any of that. There is a preemptive need to invest in the foundation of my character, a foundation to build life on.
It’s hard to imagine myself beyond 30, but it’s not hard to imagine myself approaching 30 (27, 28, 29). As I examine the men I respect most in those ages, there’s one common denominator: they didn’t rush, they let the concrete dry. Maybe 50% of them are married, (and of those who are they didn’t neglect their internal world to get there), 50% are settled into their formal long-term career, and 50% of them are settled into a city for long term. Regardless of when they got married or settled into a career or city, they didn’t rush there. They let their focus be their formation as sons of God beyond any other goal. These are men who are going to peak on their deathbed.
Here at 21, I want to put the majority of my investment into a good foundation. I want to partner with the Father in going in doing the hard work of self-inventory, of being patient as my inward man becomes more of who I was designed to be. And I will trust my Father, in his time, to bring those things of life to pass as he would see fit, as the concrete dries, and my foundation can support more of the life he is excited for me to live.