The Truth about Becoming.

One day a few weeks ago, I finally decided to crack down and redo my room. It had last been painted when I was a sophomore in high school. Back then, my favorite color combination was navy blue and bubblegum pink, so naturally, it seemed wise to plaster each all over my room. My walls were covered in monograms that matched the ones on my Pottery Barn Teen throw pillows. My desk chair was pink with white polka dots. Clearly, it all needed to go. So, on that same day, I went to Lowe’s (deciding on my paint color in the car before I went in), bought a couple gallons of beige paint, and decided to become a grown up once and for all.In order to be able to paint the entire room the next day, I needed to tape the entire thing that night. With the help of my brother and sister, we lined every corner and baseboard with tape, finally finishing around midnight. Early the next morning, my boyfriend came over, and in about five minutes, he taught me the basics of painting. We immediately got to work. I am going to finish this today, I thought. I already knew of a few furniture pieces that I could pull up from the basement and a couple wall hangings from my door that I could hammer into my newly painted walls. In my head, this project would last a day, and by the time I crawled into bed, my room would be a flawlessly curated space for a mature college junior.So Adam poured the paint into my tray and stroke by stroke I covered up my youth. It was a real coming-of-age moment. Within a few hours, we finally finished the first coat. And, I hated it. I hated it! It was the ugliest shade of yellow I had ever seen. My beautiful, elegant grown up room looked like a giant post-it note. I was honestly really disappointed. In my head, I tried to find a way to make it work—to convince myself that I could find a cool way to work in yellow. But I just couldn’t. Now I would have to find a time to go back to get another gallon and another day to paint.I ended up finding another shade of beige that I liked better, and I spent a solid three days painting it. I still haven’t gotten to my bathroom, still surrounded by four pepto-bismal pink walls, and I just now peeled off all the tape and picked up all the drop cloths I put down. Still, my walls lay empty, my desk is without a chair, and my night stand is missing the dainty plant I imagined would sit on top of it.What I thought was going to be a one day transformation was drug out over the course of a couple weeks and counting. I tried so hard to grow up in one day. I got carried away by this desire to move beyond the preppy, Lilly Pulitzer-loving high schooler that I once was.Oddly enough, this silly little experience of mine taught me something true and important. Something that I wish I had learned earlier. We do not grow up in a day. It’s not a smooth, clean, and stain-free transition. My arms and legs are still spotted with paint and my baseboards are smudged with beige. Growing up is slow and messy and unplanned. It happens over time, without us even knowing it—not in perfectly planned steps. I think that in our culture of instant gratification, of the here and now, we feel an urge to skip past the ugly. The stages when our walls are half navy blue and half beige.In James, we are reminded to make a home in those in between stages. We are told to “be patient, then, brothers and sisters, until the Lord’s coming. See how the farmer waits for the land to yield its valuable crop, patiently waiting for the autumn and spring rains. You too, be patient and stand firm” (James 5:7-8). He also says, “let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature—lacking nothing” (James 1:4).We grow slowly, so that we can grow well.words by Kate Payne and photo by Cate WillisSaveSave