On Turning Eighteen

Being eighteen does feel different. On past birthdays, people have asked, "So, how does it feel to be ___ years old?" But it didn't feel like anything. Being eighteen, however, bears consequences: I can vote, I can get my regular license, and, most significantly, I can work more than eight hours a day. I feel like it's time for me, by the power of God, to forget about myself and focus on others, to see people the way God sees people. I feel that if He has brought me all this way through childhood and kept me from many eminent dangers, He must have a plan and purpose for me. That blows me away. To think that through out the ages and places so many people have died in the womb or while they were but infants or toddlers, and to think that I have been preserved and trained thus far, just blows me away. Why me?

The motto for seventeen was : "We are seventeen; we are invincible." I don't know about this eighteen thing yet.

I've realized today that there are people who really care about me. Sometimes I forget that, but I couldn't today. My friends threw me a party and I was utterly shocked. The best part about it was not that we had fun, though we did, but just that they cared enough to take the time to do that for me. I was, as I said before, shocked. Then I checked facebook tonight and saw that sixteen people had wished me a happy birthday on my wall. I suppose it doesn't take a whole lot of effort to write on someone's wall, but it meant a great deal to me.

Thank you so much, God, for eighteen years! You have done for me inconceivably more than I can comprehend, and yet I am still so far from Your perfect image. Please draw me near to You and use me for "righteous purposes."