Age Matters

My brother, youngest sister, her boyfriend, and another friend came home to Dallas this weekend to spend some time with the family. After a very enjoyable meal together the group announced that they were going to go out together and promptly turned to my other sister and asked if she wanted to go. My other sister, who is two years younger than I am, was in town without her husband that weekend and I thought it was pretty neat that the group thought enough to ask her if she wanted to go. "Knowing" that they hadn't invited my husband and me wasn't really a big deal because I knew that they knew we had to get the little guy home and in bed so I didn't think much of it until the group went into the garage apartment to make plans and shut the door behind them. A few minutes went by before I realized that I had left my son's diaper bag in the apartment and needed to grab it so I could change his diaper. I gently knocked on the door and walked in when I realized that they were all standing there in silence waiting for me to leave before continuing their conversation. I quickly left the room and returned to where my dad and husband were waiting then recounted what had happened. My dad laughed and said, "Yep, you are officially old. How does it feel to be too old to be cool?"

I am still pretty disturbed by the whole experience because I am accustomed to being discounted for being "too young" but for the first time in my life I was discounted for being "too old" and I am NOT OLD! I look back over the evening and suddenly recognize the difference in the way my sisters friends would talk to me compared to my other sister and realized that I wasn't "one of them" I was "one of the adults". Sometimes I feel like I'll never break into the "adult realm" with my colleagues and have wondered many, many times how old I will have to be before I will be considered experienced or even as a peer so finding out that I was already on the other side of the fence was pretty shocking to me. The incident has really got me thinking about how we appear to others verses how we see ourselves and what it really means to be all things to all people. What surprising way have you been tagged or how do you stay relevant when others see you as an outsider?

To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God's law but am under Christ's law), so as to win those not having the law. To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings.
2 Corinthians 9:21-23

Your thoughts?