Growing Up [Guest Post]

Today the sky is as wet and gray as it could be. The summer does not want to end, but it must. The sun is hidden, but the world is not black. The trees outside of my room are like hazy blotches of paint. And I…I am watching my hands, and wondering if they are really mine. I glance down, and see how long my legs have become. I remember that I was born twenty years ago, twenty whole years ago. I used to be a child, who was a babe, who was a dream. But my skin is stretching, and my eyes are widening. I am constant, and changing. I am growing so long that directly in the middle of me I am about to break. All these new things that are somehow so old spill out, and scatter in the dirt until suddenly they take root, and stretch their arms and legs towards this gray, gray sky. I am not what I was, but still I am all that I know. I have passed through other days, and those days stick to me, yet they are gone while always being present.

I want to know what it means to grow and to grow and to grow until growth is like breath, heavy breath making my lungs quake and my heart start beating wildly. I want to know what it means to grow and grow until I can go no further, and my head has struck the ceiling of sky, and the sky breaks, and heaven falls through the cracks, and I more than a woman. I am new, and so old all at once.

This is so strange. I look in my mirror framed in dried roses, and wonder where the chubby eleven-year-old went. That careless child who couldn’t match her clothes, and rarely combed her hair. That child who knew the sweetness of autumn air. Where did she go? I look again into that mirror and realize, with shock and indifference,that she never left. Nowhere, she didn’t go anywhere. She only stretched, and wrestled with the wind, and cried, and opened new doors in a young heart that is so old.

It is exciting, and so subtle, very subtle. I am a woman, and I am a child. I am rags being sewn together. I am new, so old. Falling apart, and coming together.

I am being washed with the night, and clothed in the light. I am being drowned by his tears, and raised with his sorrow. I am spinning and spinning seeing different curves at different angles. A new girl at one angle, the old at another. What does it mean to be new and to be old? I have stared out this window before, sometime before in the beginning. The window did not leave, but it is different, constant and changing.

The fairy tree in my backyard remains, but the fairies have changed. They have stretched and dwarfed. Their faces bare more crevices. They are crying and laughing. What has happened to us all? I ask them for a name, and often they will not tell. Are names a secret now or is it too painful for them to tell me? Must they learn to trust me all over again? So I put my head in the branches and tell them sincerely,

“It is me, truly. Do you remember? I am old, but I am new. I am caught in the middle of me, but soon I will break. I am growing up, yes. But is it really as frightening and seamless as that? Do not forget that it is I who was a child, who was a babe, who was a dream.”

It is shocking to be sure, and all must experience it. I am frightened, yes, but I know that eventually I will grow out of my breath, and be all that I should be, knots untied and chasms bridged. At that moment, the first of many mysteries will be revealed. My hidden God who remains with me will collapse the barrier between faith and knowing.

I am a girl looking in a mirror dimly. I am new, so old, and one day I will see him face to face, with my back towards the mirror, and my eyes towards the light. I will be more than I know and all that I should be. More than a woman, more than a girl, more than a babe, more than a dream.

[Noelle Beck is a twenty year old, junior at Moody Bible Institute. Her major is theology. She has lived in the state of Maine since she was ten years old. Before that she lived many places, too many to list here. She thinks that she might want to be a missionary; she knows that she wants to be a writer. She has been writing since she was eight years old. Her goal in life is to understand the Gospel better, and to love people more. The wind is her favorite thing, among other things.]