Don’t Be Scared to Live Life

BREAKING FREE FROM WARPED DEPENDENCE

The night before my parents dropped me off at college, I bawled like a baby. I sat on the dock at our cabin with my uncle and he was trying to tell me that college was going to be the best. Of course he would say that. He had a ton of friends and overall is much cooler than I am. I was generally quiet, self-conscious of my every move, and convinced if I just kept my head down, no one would notice how awkward I truly was. 

I couldn’t see how college would be much different, but with my uncle’s encouragement, I moved into my dorm on campus determined to be braver than I was in high school. I willed myself to say hi to people I passed on the sidewalks. It didn’t take too long before I noticed something: everyone was awkward. Everyone was worried about fitting in and not looking stupid. We were all scared of this new place we found ourselves in, and of the future that was waiting for us when we graduated. 

As was the norm on my dorm floor, I went home to my parents’ house more weekends than I stayed on campus. Weekends were the time to have my dad investigate the weird noise my car was making (and fill it with gas and run it through the car wash). It was the time my mom handed me random insurance documents I didn’t know what to do with. Weekends were the time to get all the laundry done that I’d neglected because I didn’t want to pay for it in the dorms. If I was lucky my mom would take care of it for me because she was just happy I was home. 

BALANCING ACT 

College is a carefree time when major life responsibilities don’t always hit you yet. I was blissfully unaware of how much my family had been doing for me my entire life. I’m thankful that I had two loving parents who were happily married and had the means (and the desire) to help shoulder adult burdens for me as I grew up. Many of my floormates had the same experience. 

And then there was Rachel. I met her at Street Level Ministries. She had a nose piercing, wore Doc Martens, and seemed to never care what people thought of her. We’d later become roommates where I’d see her balance classes, three jobs, student orgs, and keep tabs on her bank account to check there was enough. She split time between her mom and dad’s houses on the weekends she went home (which was not every weekend, to my surprise). When her car needed fixing, she took it in. When the money wasn’t there, she made sacrifices. She was a dreamer, an idea machine who had a dozen different lives planned out to live if God would let her. She wasn’t waiting around for people to do things for her or questioning her every move. She was the opposite of me in nearly every way. Mostly because she wasn’t scared to live life. 

FAILURE TO LAUNCH 

College students have seriously been struggling with the transition into college and adulthood. Their tendency to rely on their parents caught the attention of the dean of freshmen at Stanford University a few years back. So much so that she wrote a book about it: How to Raise an Adult. Julie Lythcott-Haims believes that “overparenting” is to blame for this dependency on others, and even noticed the tendency in herself with her own kids: 

I came home for dinner one night and leaned over my 10 year old’s plate and began cutting his meat. And here I was a dean by day working with over parented college students, and then by night I’m over parenting my own children. And that believe it or not as mundane as it sounds, was my aha moment. I realized if I’m cutting the meat of a 10-year-old how in the heck do I expect him to be a freestanding 18-year-old because there’s a whole lot of skills between cut your meat and go to college.¹ 

This is why university staff get a good laugh out of us when our parents call them to get their 19-year-old child out of their housing contract. It’s true, overparenting is a huge issue! And maybe we’re not totally to blame. There is something to say about never having to do anything for yourself, then being unprepared when the time comes. But it poses the question: Do we not have the skills for basic adulting, or are we dependent on others because we are scared that we’re going to mess up our lives with one wrong decision? 

We do ourselves a huge disservice when we let the opinions of others and fear of failure stop us from living life to the fullest. Our insecurities make us codependent on others and we look to others to tell us what to do. How can we break free from caring so much what others think of us? 

“Our insecurities make us codependent on others, and we look to others to tell us what to do. How can we break free from caring so much what others think of us?”

FAILURE IS NORMAL 

It’s easier to have other people do everything for you. It just is. But if you’ve felt the satisfaction of doing the hard thing, you’d agree that doing the thing you were scared to do always grows you in ways you never expected. 

It’s easier to ask other people what they think you should do than think through the options and be accountable for your own decisions. But once you realize that most “wrong decisions” aren’t going to kill you, you’ll see the freedom that comes from experiencing a little bit of failure. 

Consider atrophy. Astronauts lose muscle mass in space due to the loss of gravity. Our bodies need the resistance to keep in proper condition. In the gym, failure is something you want! Your muscles have to literally break down to grow back stronger. Resistance is what builds strength. If your last rep is failing, you’re happy because you know it will make you stronger in the end. 

Think about diamonds formed by pressure and gold refined by fire. So many things in life are designed to need pressure to come out the other side better and stronger than before. You will never fail if you always rely on other people’s critical thinking, but you will never learn to think critically yourself. So let yourself fall down for once. 

CONSIDER YOUR PURPOSE 

Indecision is easier when you’re aimless. If you don’t know where you’re going, why should you have any confidence that you’re headed in the right direction? Once you have a goal, you can track your trajectory is headed in the right direction, even if there are a few zig zags along the way. 

If you don’t know your purpose, maybe you’ve seen someone who does. For me, that was Rachel. Once I started going to church with her, I saw others like her. Not all of them had a nose-piercing (although an odd number of them did.), but they all were surprisingly confident in the direction their life was heading, and it wasn’t because they were living without mistakes. They were living for something bigger than themselves. They were on a mission. They had things to do, people to see, and places to go. They didn’t rely on others to get things done or make all the decisions. Somehow, they knew exactly what they were supposed to be doing. 

And that somehow was a Someone. It was God. Over time, I saw the strength of others as they lived with grit. When they didn’t always seek comfort, they experienced adventures of a lifetime. They willingly exposed themselves to bugs, long plane rides, ridiculous traffic, and no A/C to visit the places God was working. They moved places with no job lined up simply because they trusted that God wanted them there. They weren’t afraid of failure. They were afraid of not making their life count. 

This is the greatest part of Christianity, in my opinion. Because we know God, we know why we were created and we live life on purpose. And we live large! Believe it or not, God really does have a plan for your life, things He wants you to do. But you won’t find it if other people are always making decisions for you. He gave you a mind that can think and a heart that can dream, so what’s stopping you? It’s because of Him that you don’t have to be afraid to move. 

¹gse.harvard.edu/ideas/edcast/19/03/overparented-underprepared