Growing up is a topic I think about a lot. I guess when you get past the glamor of getting to write your own chapters, in this book of life, all you do is worry about how to make it the best book all together.I feel like I think about growing up more when I visit Crowley, TX where I spent my childhood. Just as much as there is no other feeling like turning off highway 1187 to goto Dustin’s childhood home, which is just less than a mile from my childhood home, there is also a profound sadness that comes with it too. A town doesn’t grow with you. Even as familier as this place is to me it hasn’t been part of some of the great and most disappointing moments of the last 8 years. I had so many great memories from this small town in TX that I worry if I can say that about my life since I moved away. When you make a choice to move so far away from your home it makes you very acutely aware that the world is a little bit harder to deal with without that pocket of security that you didn’t even know existed before.That discomfort began that day my Dad dropped me off at Harding and has lessened, but still will probably always be there for me. I had no worries about moving away. I was excited about having the opportunity to do things outside of the protection of my parents, but I don’t really think I had thought about how it would feel to be far away from them. I mean you think that I would of contimplated what that might feel like, but I hadn’t, I was more caught up being on my own. During college I couldn’t even stomach to revisit the last place I had eaten lunch with my father before he left me. Ironic huh? It was like a reminder of this large part of myself that wasn’t present anymore. The world was cruel without your parents; I learned more than I would of learned with them at my hip, but it was harder. I probably did more than I would have with them there and relayed more on myself, which was a good life lesson.All that to say, I feel like I lucked into some of my own life lessons. Growing up is something you do even before you know it happened. I had always felt like I could be the architect of my life, until I realized that most of my life happened without a lot of thought on my part. So more than anything I feel like I have learned to roll with what comes my way instead of worry about every little decision I have made or have yet to make.