To be cool or not to be cool, does it really matter

So I run the nursery at our church (www.destinychurch.cc) with my husband, Ryan, helping me. We go in there every other Wednesday-night-service as average little worker bees. But that leaves us with the other Wednesday nights free. Our church doesn't have regular service that night. Instead, its different little Bible classes that begin and end. So we don't go to them because if we did we'd only ever get half a class.

Well what we've found is that the youth group, high-school with some lingering college kids, has a rockin' little service that same night. Since its a regular sevice we don't have to worry much about not being there every other week. But then there's the issue that we aren't high-school or even college age anymore. We're nearly thirty! EEEKKK!!! I don't think when I was their age I could even imagine myself in this phase of life.

So we may or may not start going and perhaps try and help out. Which is what the old people do who go to youth groups, right? We just appreciate the youth pastor and his messages, his name is Matt Bell by the way (www.myspace.com/mutematt). But that is really not what this is about.

The thing is is being around these kids, alot of whom are workers in my nursery, makes me feel OLD! It reminds me of a simpsons quote. You may remember the episode when Homer joins a freak show taking cannonballs in the gut at lollapalosa in order to proof he's still, cool. The episode starts out with him having these revelations through his kids that he's no longer "with it." So he flashes back to him being a teenager and talking to his dad. Homer and Barney are getting ready for a night on the town, listening to some kind of 70's southern rock when Grandpa Simpson busts in and wants to know what they're listening to. The general consensus between Homer and Barney is that he's just not "with it." To which grandpa Simpson responds,...

"I use to be 'with it.' But then they changed what 'it' was and now what 'it' is is weird and scary. And it'll happen to you too!"

Well grandpa Simpson, I'm with you. Isaac, my son, may not be a teenager yet, but through these youth kids I'm seeing a world of change in popular culture that just sort of passed me by. I'm left at a bus stop where the bus to cool new things just drives on with out me and I'm left wondering...

"But I thought I was cool?"

I supose that popular culture was never really my bag anyway. My thing was more in the line of sub-culture. But I still feel aged and out of it. What to do...

In the grand scheme of things I guess the blessing of this transition is that I no longer really care about being "cool." Well maybe a little, or else why would I write any of this. Over all however it just doesn't matter to me like it use to, when I was their age. That, to me, is a big relief.

As a teenager I remember having this huge drive to discover my identity. Unfortunately I was no longer looking towards anything Christian related. I tryed on several little groups and they didn't really fit me for long. I was temporarily a metal-head, goth, and punk. Finally the hippy thing came around. It wasn't really the track I was running in but it worked. The hippy kids I was around were a great little family too.

Even now, years later and world's of water under the proverbial bridge, I still can fit into that little hippy mold that I had put myself in. Perhaps I'm not spinning in place under a bridge in some far off parking lot, listening to a space jam spilling out from a nearby arena, but I'm still me. I still like granola, birkenstocks, organic food, tie-dyes, camp fires, and drum jams. It's just not the only thing in my life that defines me anymore.

I've moved on, grown up, and taken another road through life. Hopefully I still have something to offer a younger generation looking to be "cool" by some identity they've discovered all their own. So much changes. You don't believe it when you're trodding through those peter pan moments of your teen years, every moment feels eternal and precious. "Thirty," is a dirty word and a far off planet that you don't ever think of moving to one day. But it happens.

Hopefully when they do move off to that place far away from Neverland, they can look back at where they've been and gain wisdom from the mistakes they made along the way. Hopefully they're already investing into their eternity and not just living for the moment. Hopefully I can still be able to relate to them, even when I'm truly a dinosaur.