Grow Up.

Increasingly, young women are choosing to stay home, stay single, and stay dependent on our parents. While there is nothing wrong with living with your parents for a season while you prepare to launch, we were never meant to stay there forever. What does it look like to grow in this season?

While marriage and (very) early motherhood has forced me to grow up some, I've found myself still holding onto the desire to cling to my childhood. When life gets hard, I still grab the phone to call my mom, almost instinctively. She's been gracious enough to listen while still reminding me that I am an adult, and the big life decisions fall to me and my husband now.

We're living in the in-between phase of knowing that we are adults now, but also knowing that our parents and mentors have lived longer and have more wisdom in certain areas. What's crazy is that God knows this challenge and he gave us words of wisdom in this area! He knows that the church is filled with people of all different walks of life and we are supposed to rely on one another to grow in spiritual maturity.

Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good. Then they can urge the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands, so that no one will malign the word of God.

Titus 2:3-5 NIV

Younger ladies, do you have older women in your life that you meet with regularly? A mother, mentor, or friend who can speak wisdom into you? And do you listen?

Older ladies, are you connecting with younger women in your church and finding ways to pour into them?

No matter what phase of life you're in, you most likely have both younger women (or girls) and older women in your life. If not by age, maybe by spiritual walk. Whoever you are, be willing to both teach and be taught. Remember the Proverbs 31 woman:

She speaks with wisdom, and faithful instruction is on her tongue.

Proverbs 31:26 NIV

We want to be women who are filled with wisdom, but we often don't want to humble ourselves to listen to the wisdom when it's coming from someone older. Dare to be humbled. God often works through the wise (and sometimes uncomfortable) words of another believer. To grow, we have to go through the growing pains. It isn't automatic.

So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.

Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.

Ephesians 4:11-16 NIV

If you want to grow in wisdom and confidence, you need to be edified. Go to church. Get connected. And seek out older women who can speak into your life. To grow deeper in faith, we need one another. You'll find that the things that make you the most uncomfortable are also the most rewarding. Let's allow ourselves to be stretched and challenged outside of what feels comfortable and safe. Let's allow others to call us out on our sins and grow from that! As Christian women, we want to look radically different from the world around us. Instead of cutting out people we deem "problematic" or "toxic" simply because we disagree with them, let's look for opportunities to learn from our mistakes.

Wounds from a friend can be trusted, but an enemy multiplies kisses.

Proverbs 27:6 NIV

This doesn't mean you have to let people walk all over you, but if someone you know and trust tells you you're living in sin, consider the possibility that they may be right! Bring it to God in prayer. Ask him to open your eyes to the truth in their words. Growing hurts sometimes. It is hard to hear that we aren't perfect and that we have blind spots, but that's why we need the body. Lean into your Church family today.