Youth - Song Whittington

 According to the Oxford dictionary, youth is defined as "the state or quality of being young, especially as associated with vigor, freshness or immaturity." When we think of youth, we tend to think of our younger years, long before anything "bad" happened. Youth was a time of purity, of happiness. There were no looming worries in our life and the scariest thing was the closet at night. Youth, however, fades much faster than we anticipate. We're young, we have all we could desire, and we can't wait to grow up. There's an underlier here: the illusion of protection. When we are young we are invincible, at the top of our own little world, but with one wrong shift of our precariously stacked pile, we can fall with a deafening crash.

For us, our crash was in eighth grade. I won't go into many details, but let's just say there's a reason I am using plural pronouns for myself. The eighth grade was one of discovery, learning more about mental health, neurodiversity, about the loss of childhood. We learned about the actuality of our childhood, about the lack of a childhood. At the moment, it seemed gradual, like we were falling in slow motion in a dramatic movie scene. In reality? It was sudden, in the blink of an eye. We were at the top and with one wrong slip, BOOM. Our world came crashing down around us and we were left in the rubble, unsure what to do. 

Adam and Eve had a similar experience, in my opinion. They were young, newly created. And they were naive. They were a beautiful creation, made in the image of God. Even Satan saw their perfection. Adam and Eve had their whole world, they had everything they could have wanted, and then they fell. The temptation, the fruit, and the fall. It all happened in what seemed like a moment, but I'm almost certain that it felt like an eternity as they hid from God in the garden. When the footsteps echoed across the way and they wondered if He would find them. What would He say? What would He do? Fear swept through them as a new uncertainty arose and they fell far from their high point. One wrong step and it all came crashing down. And so they sat amongst their fallen world and wondered, "what now?" 

This is a question most people have at least once in their life. What now? After all has fallen, where do you go? There are a lot of answers here. There's the obvious answer, run to God. Yet, a lot of people don't. Why? Well, you don't know what I did. God could never love me after this. I'm too far gone. God doesn't want me. Sound familiar? That's called doubt and it's one hell of a liar. It's good at its job, I'll say that. In the end, what can we run to? What would fix us after falling this far? The answer: Jesus. God loved the world so much He gave His only son. And what do we have to do? Beleive. It sounds too easy, too good to be true. But hey, I guess that's just grace and mercy for ya. 

I could never earn God's love, so He sent it to me instead. Now that, that's love. 

This is a bit long-winded but I had a lot on my mind. I'm hoping that it's ok. 

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