I remember when I was a little girl I used to love to swing, I used to love climbing on the monkey bars in the playground at my elementary school. I would walk around the black top talking with my friends about the “future”, as if we knew what was going to happen. As I grew up, I “rolled” around the middle school campus on my heelys and roller backpack thinking that high school was so far off. Then only to become a freshman believing that graduation was eons away, and before I knew what was happening my name was being called to receive my diploma.
I don’t remember growing pains as a child. I have friends back at home who have a daughter named Dahlia. I want to say that Dahlia was about 3 when she started to experience the pain that occurs when our legs and arms magically shoot out and become longer, her parents not being able to do much besides give her children tylenol and draw her a warm bath. But her body was telling her it was time to grow up a little bit more and it was something that she would just have to go through.
In the Romero household, it’s a little known tradition that once you turn 18, you start contributing and “earning” your stay. You could go figure things out on your own, or you could stay in the house get a job and pay rent. That was probably one of the harder lessons I’ve learned in my life, one day I was dependent on my parents living in the house I grew up in, and the next having to figure out what it meant to be a independent with a list of bills due at the end of the month. Don’t think it “cruel parenting” by any means, I had a lot of help along the way, and my parents taught us how to take care of our selves and how to be responsible, to which I truly am thankful for them in doing it.
Last night after dinner I was talking to one of the older boys named Yong who is a 12th grader and in April he will graduate high school. I asked him when he graduates would he be able to stay in the house he now lives in, to which he said, “No, we aren’t allowed”. He told me that he would go to Phenom Phen- the capitol- live in the house that the owners of the orphanage have set up for the graduates and attend university there. He was telling me about his fears of leaving what he has known since he was two years old and having to embrace all the newness that this transition will bring. “Don’t be afraid of growing up”, I told him.
Advise I now realize I was speaking to myself also in that moment. Whether I like it or not, this race is almost done, after this month, only 4 remain. Pretty soon I will have to say goodbye to the family I will have traveled and grown with for a year and head back to my small city in So-Cal. The question of “What are you doing when you get back?”, leaves knots in my stomach. It’s not like I don’t know what is waiting for me when I go back, but rather I have all these thoughts and desires now and absolutely zero direction on where to go.
One does not remain the same once they have experienced growing pains, and in the last 7 months and the following 4, let me tell you, not a single person on this squad will be coming home the same person as when they left. We have been stretched and pushed further than what we first imagined or were willing to go. We have “grown up” a little bit more, I have “grown up” a little bit more. But that is the thing about growing up, while my height plateaued at a whopping 5’4 when I was a sophomore in high school, I will never be done growing in my faith on this side of heaven. And while some of it is painful (sorry there is no bubble gum flavored serum),growing up is necessary for us as followers of Christ. But I think the reassurance we have is we follow a faithful God who knows what he is doing and has goodness in store for us through the pains.
“When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways.” 1st Corinthians 13:11.
