“No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.” Hebrews 12:11

Maturity is inconvenient.

Maturity makes me face things head on and strips away my self-deception. It’s like waking up on a cold winter morning wrapped in a snuggly blanket, but knowing you have to get out of bed. Getting out from under that blanket and being embraced by the chilly air – yeah, it’s like that.

For example, if I budget my time better, I have to say “no” to indulging my social media habit any time I feel like it.

Confronting that coworker who disrespects me in front of my peers is uncomfortable. I’d rather just smile and let it blow over and hope (aka “tell myself a lie”) that it won’t happen next time.

If I forgive the person who hurt me, I might have to consider that he/she really isn’t full of evil and out to get me. It takes effort to be gracious when I’d rather mentally rehearse revenge scenarios. It also hurts my pride because I have to admit that there’s a possibility that I could be partly to blame.

What might you need to deal with?

   Chronically making excuses
   Time management
   Money management
   Forgiving others
   Forgiving yourself
   Sharing credit
   Taking responsibility instead of blame shifting
   Confronting difficult people
   Asking others if I am the difficult person
   Being honest about your own prejudices
   Accepting limitations
   Putting others’ interests before your own
   (Fill in your immaturity blank here) __________
   (Go ahead - add another) ___________
   (And one more for good measure) __________

OK, the bad news is we all have areas where we get stuck. But here’s the good news…

You get to decide how quickly you want to mature.

That’s right. You can choose to prolong the process, hope other people will somehow pick up on your passive/aggressive “hints,” be overly sensitive, whine about it, and announce to everyone around you how your situation is so tough. Or you can deal with your difficulty head on, face the pain and get it over with quickly.

It’s kind of like removing a band-aid. If you peel it off slowly it just prolongs the “ouch” factor. You might as well just yank it off. Yeah it hurts a bit more, but you get it over with all at once and then you move on and forget about it.

Funny how when we face down our fears, they rarely amount to the disasters we thought they would be. And then we just move on to better things.

So, what are some of the band-aids that you need to remove? Do you have a story of how you avoided a maturity area, but when you finally acted it was far easier than you thought? Let me know. I’d love to hear from you.