Did anyone get handed a “Guide to Adulting” book growing up? And if so, can anyone share it with me by chance? Or did anyone’s parents happen to put on a weekend seminar on “How To Be An Adult” that I could get a refresher on?
Before the age of the internet, the easiest way to acquire information about something new was either via reading about it in a book, which was likely ascribed to a thumb-fumbling effort of sifting through an Encyclopedia deck, or via a personal teaching of sorts, if you were fortunate to have had access to an expert within close proximity. The accessibility of information was drastically different when I was a teenager than it is now.
If I had to guess, I would assume most of us got thrust into adulting without the full knowledge of everything it entails. Sure, we easily fell in love with the grand illusions of freedom and new possibilities that adulting could bring. Still, the flip side of the coin is all the difficult things about adulting that I feel no one talked about until it was too late. A few to mention that every adult can relate to are bills, relationship difficulty, car troubles, budgets, unexpected expenses, credit bureaus, ongoing health conditions, and, let’s not forget the icy on the cake of an adult life… taxes!
If you bought an electronic in the last decade, you know the term “technical support.” But have you ever considered what your adult life would look like if we all had “adulting support”? Better yet, what if “adulting support” was available 24/7, 365 days a year, for the entirety of an adult life, for free? What if an expert was available whenever you needed help, knowledgeable in everything that could come in your adult life? Would you call on “adulting support” or continue to fix or figure things out independently? How much would you value expert experience during your adult life as you navigate the unknowns and unexpected seas of life?
There is one thing that is certain for all adults: we all will, at some point, find ourselves in situations as adults in which we feel lost or maybe hopeless. If you find yourself sending up an SOS signal in your adult life, there is hope and encouragement for you, regardless of your situation and how you might have gotten there. The Bible gives this powerful promise that I think clearly defines what “adulting support” looks like:
Isaiah 41:10 NLT
No matter the time of day, the state of a marriage, the depth of a low, the bleakness of a situation, the entanglement of a lie, or the laws that may be broken, an expert is available and ready to support you.
There is no need to wait on hold or struggle through the department phone prompt options. You don’t have to worry about getting all the details right in the story or even be concerned about proving that you might be right or justified in your actions. He knows everything and still loves you more than you could ever understand.
At one time or another, we will all face the difficult challenges of adulting. The question is not if, but when those tough situations arise, do we call on things that are the wrong kind of support, or do we go straight to the top to get the only true 24/7 “adulting support”? Or better yet, do we fail to acknowledge our need for support and put on a facade that nothing is wrong?
The fear that tends to come into focus in all of this is how many adults are drowning daily and fail ever to put up an SOS signal. Did you know that SOS, when first agreed upon by the International Radio Telegraphic Convention in 1906, was merely a distinctive Morse code sequence and was initially not an abbreviation? Later in popular usage, it became associated with mnemonic phrases such as “Save Our Souls” and “Save Our Ship”.
Sometimes, all we have to do is FIRST let the expert at 24/7 “adulting support” know that our vessel in life needs saving. And this crazy thing we call adulting could look a lot different when support is in place.
