This past year I learned something that surprised me as a 20-year-old "adult." I learned that it was time for me to grow up. Now, being 20, I kind of thought I had already done that. I'm a junior in college, I'm pretty grown. Boy, was I wrong.

The beginning of my sophomore year started great, everything was normal and going along merrily. Then I allowed something to take me on a completely different path. I mentally shifted all of my thoughts towards very stagnant and purposeless things. I learned what I was experiencing was infatuation. Infatuation is an interesting thing. You literally have no idea you're experiencing it until you begin your ascent out of it. If you did, you would face it and overcome it the minute it began. For seven months, I allowed my thoughts and actions to control me. It was all I could think and talk about it. It was consuming and obsessive. There's a lot of humor in this though—God's humor, anyway. Here I was, this 20-year-old in college, who had always been the one telling people one thing with no experience behind it and now I was experiencing that same thing without taking my own advice. However, I finally grasp things better and have a more levelheaded opinion.

After seven months, I finally woke up. I was so tired of allowing my intelligence and love of life to disappear because of something I didn't even really have a connection to. I finally realized my mindset was still stuck in my childlike ways. I was thinking with an immature and ignorant approach. I knew this all along, but I was finally willing to let myself face it and propel on to the path I knew my creator desired for me to be on.

Once I let myself face the reality I had allowed myself to create before me, relief swept over me. I let my eyes be redirected onto the one that never left my side but allowed me to see and learn for myself a very valuable lesson.

I'm now in the stage of growing. I truly believe I will be in this stage for the rest of my life. Yes, we are always growing up and maturing, but I think we reach a pivotal point where we begin the process of seeing, believing, and deciphering for ourselves this crazy thing called life.

Life on your own can be fine. It's easy to coast and constantly seek short term satisfaction, but it is also absolutely exhausting. I'm so thankful for this little journey I experienced. It taught me many things that allowed me to face the necessity of growing up and viewing life with a more serious, but free mindset. Something new and distracting will soon run straight into my life, but I now understand myself and life on a level where I can confidently and intelligently learn what's needed and move on from it. I never want to linger on something so pointless again. Praise God for His relentless and fervent pursuit of us, even when we're at our absolute worst.