A Fond Farewell

Last month marked my 3-year anniversary working at Chick-fil-a. It's amazing how fast 3 years can fly by. Three years ago I was a baby 16-year-old who had just graduated high school. I had no idea what I was going to do with my life. I didn't really like to think about the future, I just wanted to live for the present. I was starting to get all of this responsibility and adult stuff thrown at me, and I didn't like it one bit.

Around that time I started to experience a lot of growth and maturing, both mentally and spiritually. God used several events and people to show me that He is greater and more worth knowing than anyone or anything else in existence.

The reason I'm getting all deep and emotional is because today is the last day I will ever be a teenager. That's right. Tomorrow I turn 20.

At Chick-fil-a we are taught a "system" to help us remember how to treat our customers. We greet them with a smile, make eye contact, be genuine in our enthusiasm, stay connected, and finally we offer them a fond farewell as they go out the door.

As I pause and turn around to look back at my teenage years on the eve of my twentieth birthday, I want to bid a fond farewell to some of the best, worst, and most confusing and frustrating times I have ever experienced, all of which has worked to shape and mold me according to God's perfect plan.

I'm not going to go into much detail about my high school years (honestly, who wants to hear about those times? Yikes...), but I will say that from 9th all the way through 12th grade I firmly believed I was better than every other person on the planet and that they were all greater sinners than I was. Whoever put that thought in my head, I have no idea. The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, and I was a living testament to that.

I remember not being happy or content to stay that way though. I often would draw near to the Lord, then fall right back out of the habit of reading the Word and praying. It frustrated me so much that I couldn't just stay on the "good" side and justify my belief that I was a better Christian and overall better person than all of my peers.
Through a series of events and people and sermons and family talks which came at the perfect time, I am humbled and overjoyed to say that God's grace is greater than my sin and His mercy is unfathomable. If I were Him, I would have given up on me years ago. I still fall short so often, but He is so good to remind me Whose righteousness I stand upon.

One question which always puzzles me but never fails to be asked on my birthday is "So, how does it feel to be [insert age here]?" I don't think I've ever met someone who has woken up on their birthday and suddenly experienced a drastic change of feelings caused by their sudden increase in age. It's not like one whole year of aging is saved until your actual birthday. That would be weird and sort of awkward and would definitely result in some drastic changes.
Tomorrow I will only be one day older than I am today, and I don't think I'm going to feel much different than I do right now. My only hope is that I will wake up tomorrow more in love with the Lord and more in awe of His grace than I am today. I pray that as I keep growing one day older my desire to know Him and seek His kingdom will increase all the more.

I feel it is fitting to end this post with a praise song. I praise my Father in heaven for my teenage years, even though I wasted much of that time striving for useless things. I praise Him for showing me grace through my selfishness and for listening to the prayers of such a wretch as I.

So I bid a fond farewell to my years as a teen and look ahead to what the Lord has planned next. If He can do such great things in the span of 19 years, I can't imagine what lies ahead.