Growing in Faith
Growth is something that is important for people to look towards and process. The presence of growth can be scary, but it can also feel extremely rewarding. Growing is an amazing feeling because you can look at where you are versus where you have been. Focusing on it too much, however, can also be an issue. If all you focus on is growth and looking into the future, you might miss out on the growing process. You might get discouraged because you don’t see growth at any given moment. It is important to remember that growth takes time and that is 100% okay. Sitting back and processing how far you have come and where you want to go is such an important way to take care of yourself and your mind.
The first thing that I think of when I process my own growth is how far I have come in my walk with God. I have grown up in the church, which can lead to some feeling of missing the “important conversion” moment in my life because I have always believed and known. However, I was speaking with a pastor a few weeks ago and was blown away by what she said. She explained that even for those who have grown up in a church, there was a moment where a person individually, genuinely decided that they want a relationship with God. It was growth for me to go to church when I was little, it was growth when I decided that God is who I trust, it was growth when I made the decision that I wanted to be baptized, it is growth that I am still working on being a good servant of God and accepting that love as a daily choice. The course of my walk with God has taken my whole life and I am clearly still growing, but the important part isn’t how long it is taking, it is how far I have come.
It can be really hard to find the time to just sit and process your growth, but it is so rewarding when you do. Seeing your growth and accepting that growth is a great way to learn to love yourself where you are in life. Reflecting on where you were last year versus now, or even several years ago versus now, can help you to see the beauty in yourself and appreciate yourself for how much you have been through.
The place where paying attention to your growth can be dangerous is when you are looking too far into where you want to grow next. It is healthy and good to look at yourself, see where you struggle, and decide that you want to grow in that area next. It is great to work on yourself and strive to be better, but you need to give yourself the time to do so. As I discussed before, growing takes time. Sometimes, you will go through the process of growth without realizing it. In those cases, you don’t know you are growing until you are done with that stage of growing and look back on it. For me personally, my mental health is a great example of this. At one point, after I had started to get help and was doing better, I had a really bad week. I was with friends on a trip, away from my parents and from my normal schedule. I saw myself as a huge failure as I walked around the vacation house for hours looking for something to hurt myself with. While that night was rough, and dangerous if I’m being honest, I didn’t see my growth from that experience until I got home a few days later. The growth in that experience was that I found something to hurt myself with, and I didn’t use it. I looked and looked, but was stopped dead in my tracks. I believe that God was sitting with me in that moment, he was the reason that I grew. I found something after hours of trying, thought about it, and decided to use a healthy coping mechanism instead. I saw that night as a huge mental setback until I reflected back on it when I got home. My point here is, sometimes you can’t see your growth until later, and that is okay. Please don’t beat yourself up over feeling like you aren’t growing, or even watching other people’s growth and not seeing yours. You are growing, whether you know it at the moment or not.
Growth looks different for everyone. No one’s growth is more important or the same as someone else’s. Your growth is yours individually. You have gone through your own experiences and no one knows what that was like, even if they went through something similar. Just as people are different from each other, their growth and what they have been through are different too. So whether you climbed Mount Everest or you looked at yourself in the mirror today and saw something good or you survived the past year, you have grown, and my hope is that you appreciate that.
You should reflect on yourself over the years and see that you have grown, even if nothing crazy happened. Life is hard, and just that fact that you made it to now is amazing. It is hard to make it through a week for some people. It is enough to look at yourself in the mirror and acknowledge that you made it from 2017 to 2022, you made it through whatever was too hard for you however long ago and you are still here. I am proud of you for that. You should be proud of you for that.
Looking at your personal growth to see how far you have come can be incredibly beneficial. Reflecting on my growth with God feels amazing, as it gives me hope and courage seeing how far I have come. Even though growing takes time and is hard to see in the moment, it is so beautiful to look back and recognize your growth. You are growing in so many different ways and that is beautiful. Your growth is yours, and I really hope that, if nothing else, you take away from this message that you should be proud of your growth no matter what it looks like and you see that where you are now is different than where you have been or where you will go.