I have been thinking about the word "maturity" a lot this summer. My desire for maturity largely comes from people in my life whom I have greatly respected over the years who have displayed qualities of maturity that I want for myself. I have encountered speed bumps along the way in the form of these people I greatly respect showing their imperfections, my inability to reconcile this, and my own imperfections.
As a child, adults I respected could do no wrong in my eyes. So when I experienced their imperfections, I could not wrap my immature understanding around it and would become angry and defiant. I would cut off relationships because of my hurt and lack of guidance.
I don't think maturity is a constant growth. I think of it more as growth spurts and growth spurts can be painful. After all, that is why we have the term "growing pains." I am not usually aware that I am growing in maturity, I think because I am often too focused on the pain. I don't usually realize maturity has occurred until sometime after when I see someone else exhibiting an immature behavior I once considered normal and see just how detrimental it really is.
There is maturity in vulnerability which I find interesting because the most vulnerable among us are children who, by definition, are immature. But children express their emotion and are their genuine selves at all times. When I am with a child, I know if they are feeling happy or sad or afraid or angry. They laugh, they cry, they cower, they yell and stomp their feet and they want someone to respond, to laugh with them, to console and comfort them, to protect them and help them feel safe, and to help them make sense of why things don't always go their way. And because sometimes people react poorly to our genuine, vulnerable selves and we are made to feel some emotions are undesirable, we experience shame and we learn to hide our true emotions and new levels of immaturity emerges such as sarcasm, passive aggression, and running from our conficts rather than try to resolve them.
So while our thinking as children is immature, I feel true maturity comes when we combine our wisdom in thinking that comes from age and experience with the openess of emotion and vulnerability we experience as children.
He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.”
Matthew 18:2-4 NIV
