What's The Experation Date On That...?

Ever since I can remember I regarded my appearance neither strikingly handsome nor gruesomely ugly. In fact, my features are not memorable at all. I was born to the average and have been quite content with it. The only thing ever really remarked about my appearance consistently is that I was always told I had a "young face" with "old eyes." Supposedly this is why I always carded at rated "R" movies when I was 23, but why people sought me out for counsel when I was 16.

Just recently I shaved a beard that I have been sporting for a few months now. I'm not really sure what I expected to find underneath it, but when I set down the razor and wiped the steamy fog off the mirror, I felt like I stared at a stranger in the mirror. An adult, who was beginning to show the signs of age. Lines in the face, dark circles under the eyes, and even though the whiskers were gone the skin was still slightly rough. My nose and mouth seemed strange and misplaced without their outline to keep them in position, and the eyes... the eyes that looked back at me were tired. They looked like they really should belong to an old man of eighty who was still keen eyed, but had clearly seen enough for his liking. Is this really me?

Like I said, I don't know what I expected to find under the half inch of hair that had come to be somewhat of a staple in my appearance, or why I haven't noticed the state of my appearance before... to a certain extent I feel on the edge of something other than my razor.

When I was a small boy, I grew up hearing all the time my father saying that Jesus would return soon. I believed it so much that I didn't expect to live past the age of sixteen. I'm not sure why I picked this particular year, but I believed it whole-heartedly. And because of this belief much of my early behavior was shaped. Not necessarily accepting your death, but to see an end frees you in ways most people only dream. By the time I hit sixteen I had acquired a reckless taste for life and so this did nothing to dissuade me from thinking my time on this earth would be short lived.

Now I sit at almost twenty-seven. Eleven years past my deadline, if you will forgive the pun. I feel like I have lived enough for three lifetimes. Or maybe I feel like I have lived three times as much as people my age, because there are so many experiences I have left that could not be partaken at any earlier age. Some experiences are not for young men and to rush them is foolishness itself. I have never been married, or made love, or had children. There is a section of my life yet to live that I have never really considered a possibility. Honestly, they always seemed abstract ideas that I would never participate in before my life ended. My freedom has always derived from having nothing, to very little to lose. And now that I have relationships and responsibilities I'm having a hard time figuring out how to hold loosely to that which is most dear to me. I know why the apostle Paul calls to men in the ministry to stay single, and forsake worldly possessions that tie you down, but on the other hand I believe I'm beginning to understand the love that God likens to the devotion, passion, and anticipation of the bridegroom and the approaching wedding feast.

And so here I am on the edge of something. I find people, many people my own age inept at life. They run and run in a panic at one thing or another and I am frustrated that they cannot see the solution that easily presents itself. Even more so I am frustrate that my cousel which sometimes is the very heart of wisdom that I have prayed to God for falls on the deaf ears of those older than me simple because they regaurd me to young to see things clearly, when they haven't so much as bowed a knee. I see people with hollow lives, mundane existences, and people my age and sometimes older that (in my estimation) are not wise and have not lived as much as I have. I don't know if this is true or it is my own vanity. After all, I'm a not even a big duck in a small pond, but a tadpole in a sea of experiences. I guess I just feel like other people my age are talking about all the things they want to do, and I don't feel that way. I am content with the things already done, but I know that if I feel like I have lived three times over at twenty five... how many more adventures await me?

Christ have mercy on a small man... make my beard grow back in fast.