Adulthood Has Stages Too

In grade-school, and even last semester when I was enrolled in the CNA program, I learned that life’s stages included infant, toddler, childhood, adolescence, and adulthood.  As I live through these myself, I’m realizing that adulthood isn’t just a single stage - it has stages, too!  Think about it, if we consider adulthood as beginning at age 18 or 21, life expectancy in the United States is over 70 years!  That’s fifty years of adulthood - how can that be a single stage?

I graduated college and married at age 22, then bought my first home at 23, then had children at 28 and 31, and to me all of that was a single stage (and a blur)!  The first time I gave any thought to adulthood stages was following my tubal ligation in 2007, at age 31 - that represented the end of my reproductive years/stage. 
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In 2011-12, I lamented the end of another stage - marriage.  I was raised to think marriage was forever, until death, but my marriage was impossible to continue.  In fact, I may have stayed longer than even God intended for me to stay…imagine that!  In September 2011, He spoke to me saying, “You are staying in this marriage for you, not for Me.”  What a way to end a stage - it still took me months to come to grips with my pending single-parenthood, but God’s own words told me that the marriage I was trying to hold onto was not honoring Him, so why would I try to remain in that stage so desperately?  Next was the “all-me” stage, (which it really already was) in which I raised my children without their father’s input - not that he wasn’t allowed, he chose not to intervene.  It was during that stage that I started attending Bible Study Fellowship, and really began to understand God’s Holy Word, which began a new stage - a stage of true prayer, and reliance upon God’s plan that is unknown to us, but revealed according to His purposes. ​

Romans 8:28
And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

By trusting Him and walking with Him, He has shown me a life I couldn’t have planned for myself!  Who ever would have thought I would marry again in 2015?  I could have held on to my first marriage, ignoring the very words spoken to me, and never been able to see the new marriage God had already planned.  Now at age 50 and in a new stage, a stage I cannot name yet, I’m doing what I was doing in 2021 - Thinking Ahead, Not Planning. 
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My oldest son, Zach (prayerfully) will graduate from Clemson in May.  My younger son, Nick (prayerfully ) still has 3 more years of college.  I’m (prayerfully) approaching the end of my required years of service to the State of South Carolina…I don’t think they are going to put me out, but I have some prayerful decisions to make!  Am I entering a new stage?  I don’t know.  I am praying and asking the Lord to reveal to me my new orders, and remaining steadfast until He does.  He always tells me when a stage ends and how to start the next one.  Yes, I get anxious about it, but I trust Him.  He never fails.

1 Thessalonians 5:16-18
Rejoice always, 17 pray without ceasing, 18 give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.

Psalm 139
O Lord, you have searched me and known me!
2 You know when I sit down and when I rise up;  you discern my thoughts from afar.
3 You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways.
4 Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, you know it altogether.
5 You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high; I cannot attain it.
7 Where shall I go from your Spirit?  Or where shall I flee from your presence?
8 If I ascend to heaven, you are there!  If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!
9 If I take the wings of the morning. and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
10 even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me.
11 If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me be night,”
12 even the darkness is not dark to you; the night is bright as the day, for darkness is as light with you.
13 For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb.
14 I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.  Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
16 Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.
17 How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!  How vast is the sum of them!
18 If I would count them, they are more than the sand,  I awake, and I am still with you.
19 Oh that you would slay the wicked, O God!  O men of blood, depart from me!
20 They speak against you with malicious intent; your enemies take your name in vain.
21 Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord?  And do I not loathe those who rise up against you?
22 I hate them with complete hatred;  I count them my enemies.
23 Search me, O God, and know my heart!  Try me and know my thoughts!
24 And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!