How to Become an Adult
In this solo, faith‑informed motivational video, Chrystal Hurst addresses young adults who feel unprepared for "adulting." She outlines five core areas—"your person" (body, mind, spirit), "your pocket" (money management using a 20/30/50 budgeting rule after a 10% tithe), "your people" (building intentional community), "your partner" (relationship boundaries, sexual integrity, and kindness), and "your plan" (time management, purpose, and spiritual discernment). Throughout, she weaves practical tips (e.g., eating at home, reading books like The Purpose‑Driven Life, using budgeting apps, keeping a calendar) with Christian scripture (1 John 3:1‑2, Jeremiah 1:5) and personal anecdotes. She emphasizes that adulting is a skill that requires responsibility, intentionality, and comfort with discomfort. A bonus focus on identity encourages viewers to define themselves beyond others' labels and to trust God’s unfolding plan. The video ends with calls to engage in the comments, join her Inner Circle, and subscribe for ongoing support.
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Do you consider yourself to be a young adult but often feel like you don't know the first thing about adulting? Well, you aren't the only one who's ever felt that way, and I have something to say to you today. Hello there, my name is Chrystal Hurst. If you're new here, welcome! I'm glad you made it by. Be sure to hit that subscribe button before you leave. I'd love to meet you again here someday. But you need to know that I'm here every Monday morning, actually, with my Inner Circle, and I record this episode on a Monday morning to share it on my YouTube channel and on my Facebook page every Sunday evening. And I do that because I like the overflow to bless as many people as possible. But we've enjoyed a little bit of fun and foolery before I'm straightening up and flying right, and that's the part that I reserve for the inside. I love to spend time with the girls in the Inner Circle, and I love to give them a little extra. If you'd like to find out more about that Simply go to chrystalevanshurst.com/innercircle to find out more. But today, listen, I want to talk to you about adulting. And if you are in that season of young adulthood, and that could stretch all the way from your late teens, definitely in your 20s, it may even stretch into your early 30s, and there's a few stragglers that as they approach 40 still don't feel like they have it right. I wanted to just give you a few things to keep in mind. Because adulting is a skill, and sometimes if you've been raised right, raised well, you've been prepared. But there are a lot of people who haven't. In fact, I actually did a video last week on preparing your kids for the real world. So if you are a parent watching this, or you are a 20-something watching this, and you're like, I need like the deep dive over there, like, that is a massive list of some of the things that you can learn. Today though, I want to talk to you if you're struggling and feeling like, I just need somebody to tell me how to do it. So I'm not going to give you an exhaustive list, but I am going to give you some pivotal things that if you will listen, learn, search out these principles and practice them, it can make that on-ramp into adulthood so much easier. So there are 5 areas that I want to talk to you about that if you will make it a point to focus on developing yourself well in these areas, it will make the rest of your life so much smoother. Now I have to tell you that there are people in the room that are going to be watching this that are past these 20 or late teens, 20s, early 30s, who are going to be chiming in in the comments. And you'll see them because, listen, we come in correct in the comments, y'all. If the people who are in the Inner Circle watch, they do it. Look for their little yellow circles, that tells you they're in it. If there are women who consider themselves to be a part of the Greater Sister Circle, because if you're a girl and you love God you're a part of the Sister Circle. They're gonna chime in on the comments too. I'm gonna give you 5, and then I'm gonna let the internet aunties, the grandmothers, the cousins, the big sisters— I'm gonna let them throw some things in the comment as well. So if that's you and you're over 35, this is your moment. As you listen and things come to mind, know that the world needs your wisdom, so share your wisdom in the comments below. But I'm gonna talk about 5. The first one is I want to talk to you about your person. That means your body, your mind, and your spirit. It is your responsibility, your responsibility to take care of and develop those parts of you. Your physical body is the house that you live in. It is the part that God gave you to make sure that the soul of you had something to live in. It's the vehicle that you get around in every day. So your body, if you don't take care of your vehicle the same way that you would take care of your car, it will break down on you. Every car is not going to last forever. There are a few, you know, that people make and remake and redo the engines and repaint that last a long time, but most cars, y'all, they wear out after a while because they were not designed to last. Your body is not designed to last forever. However, you can make it last longer if you will take care of it. And one of the biggest issues that I see young people not engaging with is the care of their bodies early on. Because when you're young, you think it's gonna last forever. When you're young, you think that you don't have problems and you'll never have problems. When you're young, your body isn't talking to you and telling you that it really, really needs you to pay attention. When you're young, you're able to not listen to it and move past it and do things that actually harm your body because your body will let you make it. It's still fairly new. But if you don't take care of your body, I'm telling you, by the time you hit your mid-30s, your mid-40s, your mid-50s, your body will tell you about all the things you did in your 20s that did not set it up for success. Taking care of your body, eating well, eating salads, eating vegetables, drinking water, watching your carbs— not because you're trying to lose weight, but because too much carb in your system actually will add to the way your body interprets your need to store fat. All of these things matter. If you don't know how to eat Well, YouTube University, Google how to eat well, go to Barnes Noble and get a book, find a magazine and cook healthy recipes. This is not rocket science. It is not rocket science. And my job, while I do have other videos where I teach more specific things about meal planning and all that, what I want you to understand right now is it's your job. The main thing about adulting is that it's your job, and it starts with taking care of you. It's your job to learn. It's your job to read books. Leaders are readers. If you want to have a greater vocabulary, if you want to be a greater communicator, if you want to be considered knowledgeable and culturally relevant, you need to read. And I don't mean reading the caption on Instagram. I mean reading books where someone has taken the time to put structured thought together into a series of 10, 11, 12, 13 chapters for you. To give you thoughts you can use. And I'm talking about the spectrum. I'm talking about books that will help you build your faith. I'm talking about books that will help you to know what to do with your money, books that will help you level up with your career, books that help you to know how to communicate with people. Read. If you don't like reading, that's fine, get an audiobook, but sometimes pick up the book, the actual physical book, and read it. Listen to podcasts. Find people that speak to your soul, speak to your mind, that have a little wisdom on them. I know that you're watching all the YouTubes and all the influencers on your social medias. Find people with wisdom that have had something to say over the course of time and read their work and choose to grow. Take care of your spirit. I know your mom and them made you go to church, and I know you were so glad when you went to college that nobody was making you go to church anymore. Go to church! Find you a church where somebody is teaching you about the word of God, where someone can hold you accountable in the context of community, where someone knows your name, where you can serve, where you can grow, where you can be fed. Because here's the thing, people don't care about church until their life falls apart, kind of like how your body falls apart. And then when life falls apart, you won't have what you need— the time to take care of your person, body, mind, and spirit. Is when you're young. It doesn't mean you can't take care of it later. It doesn't mean you can't play catch-up later. But why would you do that to yourself when you can start strong now? So here's what I want you to know. If you want to take care of your body, I want you to eat at home, stop eating out. I want you to drink more water than you drink anything else. I want you to put more vegetables on your plate than you put meat on your plate. If you want to take care of your mind, I want you to read. I want you to read books that are going to change the way you think about your life. Here's one suggestion for you. Pick up Rick Warren's The Purpose Driven Life. What on earth am I here for? It's 40 weeks of thinking about your life through the lens of faith. And then I want you to pick up your Bible. If you need something to do every day to grow your person, read 5 Psalms a day and/or read 1 Proverbs a day. That will take you through a month. And every time you read it, you'll learn something new. And definitely make sure you get in church, somebody's church, somebody's Bible study. And I know some churches, you know, you maybe grew up in a church you didn't like. That's fine, that worked for your mama. Find one that works for you. Take care of your person because you are building in right now to the person later you'll be glad you built into. The second thing is your pockets, okay? Your pocket. I need you to pay attention to your money. I want you to pay attention to your pocket. What do I mean by your pocket? I mean the money that's in your pocket, or for some of you, the money that's not in your pocket. Listen, I want to teach you about a rule, the 20-30-50 rule. This rule says that once you've taken out 10% of your money for tithes— yes, I believe in tithing. I believe that when you sow into what God is doing then you leave capacity for God to sow into you. Give and it shall be given back to you, pressed down, shaken together, running over. If you rob God, what makes you think that God doesn't have ways of robbing you? It might not be coincidence this stuff is breaking down in your life and that you got to pay a little extra money to get your car fixed or to get you something fixed or to get something fixed. Maybe God is saying, oh, you won't give it to me, well, let me funnel your money into somebody who will. That's another sermon for another day. But once you have taken the 10% off the top, with what's left, pay yourself, take care of your needs, take care of your wants. Okay? Pay yourself, take care of your needs, take care of your wants. 20% savings, 50% need, 30% wants. That's after you've taken the 10% off the top. Of what's left, 20% savings, 50% needs, and 30% once. That's a guideline. There are seasons where you're going to need to be saving 30 or 40% because you're trying to catch up with something. I heard a pastor say once that he lived on half of what he made. Trust me, I know you don't want to save your money now. I know about all the things that you want to do with the money that's in your pocket, but the best gift that you can give yourself is the gift of saving for the things that you don't even know today that you're going to want tomorrow. And if you spend all the money on the things you want today, tomorrow you're going to look back and think about how you wasted money on things that actually now hold no value. And now that you have a better idea of the things that do hold value, you don't have the money for it. So I'm going to make sure that you have a link in the show notes for this episode, which you can find at chrystalhurtz.com/421. There's going to be a link to a spreadsheet, a 50/30/20 spreadsheet for budgeting for your goals. And I want you to check that out, figure it out, use Mint, or there's another app called Rocket, or you can use Quicken. I've used Quicken. Since I was in my early 20s. There are so many ways for you to track your money. Paper and pencil still work too, but handling your money and knowing where it's going is a lot like driving the car. You gotta have your hands on the steering wheel. If you drive a car without your hands on the steering wheel, it'll go, it'll just go all over the place and you may end up in a ditch. Do you want to direct the funds that you bring in the door to make sure that you actually have what you need to live the life that you want? Put your hands on the steering wheel, put your hands on your budget, have a handle on your finances, and choose where your finances take you. Because I can't tell you how many people in their 40s, 50s, 60s, or 70s regret the decisions that they made with money when they were in their 20s and 30s. Because if you start then, you can actually start with a lot less effort and a lot less investment and end up in the same place that you would if you started late with stress, later on in life. One of the best gifts that you will give to yourself is learning how to handle your money. So become a student of money. It's not just about getting rich, it's not just about being wealthy, it's not just about working for yourself like everybody right now wants to do. It's about knowing how to handle what you have. And instead of focusing on making more money, you actually could probably be better off if you would handle better the money that you have. And that skill will grow with you. Let me tell you one of the things that people who don't learn how to handle their pockets run into. If you don't know how to manage a little bit of money in your 20s, when you make more in your 30s and your 40s and your 50s, you won't know how to handle it then either. It's not about having more money, it's about being faithful to learn to manage the money you have. So practice saying no. Practice staying out of debt. If you can't pay off those credit cards by the end of the month, don't use them. Practice being generous. Practice not wasting money on eating out and food. Because why would you spend $3.50 on a drink at Red Robin or Chili's when you can make a drink at home for like cents on a dollar? You are throwing money away if you eat out all the time. I want you to learn how to manage your money, prepare for retirement, because yes, in your 20s, think about retirement. It makes the rest of your life easier. I want you to prepare for retirement. I want you to think about what you're going to want when you're 30 or 40 or 50 and start planning for it now. Don't just get the car that you want with a car payment that means you have to live at home for the next 6 years in order to take care of it. Think about the car that you need, because trust me, you'll have time to get the car that you want. Give yourself room to go. If you try to pay for it all now and get into debt doing it, you're going to realize that you spent the best of your years and the best of your early money on things that actually weren't the best for you. So take your time and think about this. Life gets better, and if you can't do it now, you'll get to do it later. All right, your pocket, your people. Build community. Be the person who gathers other people together or who says yes to an invitation. There are going to be some friendships that are only going to last for your 20s. There are going to be many other friendships that last well into the later years of your life.. But the investments that you make now are gonna pay off so well as you grow. My best friendships are the people that have known me the longest. And I know that you may have one or two friends from elementary school, and you may have one or two friends from high school. You may even have one or two friends that you keep up with well from college. But I want you to double down on those. And don't just assume that because you had them that they will last forever. Be intentional. Go out for lunch or dinner or breakfast, or, you know, visit, uh, some— have them over to your house for a movie night. I don't know, whatever you enjoy you enjoy doing. Try things, explore your city, be an adventurer in your city or their city if you're no longer in the same place. Because just like your money, when you invest in your people, the relationships grow, they have a payoff. And so many people will say they're lonely, but they won't do the work to invest. If you're lonely, I'm sorry, I don't want you to feel that way, but I want you to know that you actually get to control the narrative of your relationships. If you are in relationships that actually aren't good for you, you don't have to stick with them just because they have been with you for 3, 4, 5, 6, even 10 years. It is okay if you outgrow relationships. Do you know that that will happen? That's the reason why you think when you graduate from high school you'll be friends with those people forever, and then you go to college and what happens? You meet new friends and you have a very unique experience where you are away from your parents, and these friendships totally change the landscape of the people that you knew before. This is how life goes. What I'm telling you is, in the season that you're in, pour into the relationships you have. And then if the season with the relationship ends, it's okay. It's okay for you to live and grow. If you feel like— and I'm giving you this one for free— if you feel like you have outgrown that relationship with that boyfriend, you probably have. Don't stay around and make it work. You're going to have so much growth in your teenage years. You're going to have so much growth in your 20s. And if you realize at 24 that you were dating him for 3 years and you just don't seem to be having the same conversation anymore, it's because you grew. You can say, I think the world of you, um, I think you're wonderful, but I just think we might be going in two separate directions. Because the best people to hook up with, whether we're talking about friends or boyfriends, girlfriends or boyfriends. I want you to know that the best friendships will be the ones where you are the most aligned, aligned in purpose, aligned in your spiritual focus, aligned in what you're doing to move your life forward. Now, that doesn't mean that you can't have lots of friends or that you don't spend time with family members that you're not on the same page with, but what it does mean is that you're intentional about developing the friendships that where you can develop them and they can develop you. Iron sharpens iron, the Bible says. And if you want to get sharp, you need to be around other people who are trying to get sharp in the same areas you are too. Your people— you got to be around people. Developing friends, growing in church community, volunteering, serving with other people. People matter. And I want you to look around at your life and look at the people that you spend the most time with, the top 5. Those are the people who you are carving out room to be like. Is this who you want to be? Is this who you want to be like? Is this how you want your life to go? If yes, then dig in. If not, get some new people. I give you permission to get some new people if that's what you need to do. And I need you to be intentional about that because the right people will change the trajectory, for good or bad, of your life. All right, y'all, let's talk more specifically about your partner. I mean, you know, what, what do I want to say about this, y'all? I mean You want to know what not to do? Pick this up. I wrote about a lot in She's Still There because I wanted you to know what some of the things are that got in my way. And I don't bash anyone, but I made choices. I made choices of who I was going to be with and what I was going to do with them. And I talk about a lot of that in depth in She's Still There. What I want you to know is this: many of us, male and female, we are hungry for love. We are hungry for being known. We are hungry to have our person. I spent years watching Grey's Anatomy, and, um, Dr. Christina and Meredith, they would look at each other and they would say, you're my person. I have a husband, he's my person, and I've got some girlfriends, one in particular. We say that to each other all the time, you're my person. It's good to have a person, but when that person is asking you to be or do things that take you outside of yourself, that challenge you or push you to do things with your body that leave you in dissonance with yourself or questioning yourself, or in shame with yourself, or in a lack of alignment with yourself, that person is leading you down a wrong path. I don't care how much you feel like they love you. I don't care how much you— they've been with you or how long. And I mean this for male or female. Your people that have the best interest in mind for you, and that you have the best interest in mind for them, are not going to ask you to do things that aren't good for you. So let me tell you what's not good for you. What's not good for you is any kind of addiction. If you are with friends who are always encouraging you to do things, whether it be, uh, substance addiction, whether it be social media addiction, whether it be any other kind of screen addiction, food addiction, that friend is not one you want to spend too much time with. If someone is leading you to operate in a lack of alignment with your body, to be an enemy to your body. And what I mean by that is sex outside of marriage, you are actually being an enemy to your body. And you may not realize that until later on in life, but I'm just trying to tell you, take it from me, save it. And if you haven't saved it, then now's the time to lock it down and hide the key until the person who actually is for you for the rest of your life comes along. People take so much baggage from relationships, physical relationships, from past relationships, into the one relationship they actually want to spend the rest of their life in. You don't have to do that. And if he's prodding you or pushing you to go to bed with him every night, he's not the one. Because if he is, he'll respect the decision that you make, even if both of y'all are hot and horny. If he really loves you, he'll respect you. This same truth goes for friends who are leading you down the path That is not good. If your friends are constantly gossiping, if they're constantly tearing other people down, if they're constantly tearing you down, if they are not about positivity, life-giving words, and nurturing for you and other people, those aren't your people. Or you might be able to say to them, listen, I don't want every time we get together to just be tearing everybody down. It's one thing to have a good time, it's one thing to have a good time, tell jokes, it's one thing to laugh a little bit. It's another thing to be derogatory and destructive. And if the friends you're with are always derogatory and destructive, you need to watch it because that derogatory destructiveness will boomerang and influence you. The power of life and death is in the tongue. So what you talk about with your friends matters. I want you to think about who are you spending time with, and I want you to ask yourself, are these actually my people? Are these the people that are gonna lead me to be the kind of person I want to be. That's me just shooting straight. The other thing that I want to tell you about people is I want you to be kind to people. There is so much unkindness in the world right now, and I mean this for the people that you're married to, the people that you're friends with, and the stranger that's on the street. I look around y'all and I see so many young people that aren't being kind, and it may be that they were never taught. Maybe they weren't taught to have manners, to hold the door open for someone, to say please and thank you, to ask questions instead of making demands. Maybe it is that no one taught you. Listen, YouTube University. Read Dale Carnegie's book How to Win Friends and Influence People. Learn what it is to leave a space better than you found it, to use kind words, to clean up after yourself, to be respectful to everyone. Know when you leave your own dwelling, make sure you have taken care of your body, that you don't stink. Brush your teeth, wash your face, use deodorant. Because when you're in someone's space They have to smell you. I'm amazed at how many people don't think that I can see you and smell you when you come next to me. Take care of your appearance because your appearance is an open door for you to develop relationship. It's not about buying the latest clothes and having the name brand stuff. I mean, have fun with that if you can afford it, but my thing is make it so that any door that you wanna walk through, any relational door you wanna walk through, your boss, your coworkers, your friends at church, people in your neighborhood, that you are not doing things that puts a door between you. Your physical appearance can put a door between you. Your lack of manners can put a door between you. Your lack of kind words and positivity can put a door between you. Learn to be the person that welcomes people and watch your relationships flourish. Now let's talk about your plan. You got to have a plan for your life, and this is what trips a lot of people up when they are in their 20s and 30s, because they're like, I don't know what I want to do, I don't know what I'm supposed to do, I don't know what the what the purpose is for my life. Here's the good thing: you don't have to know what the purpose and plan is for your life. You have to be connected to God, who will give you your purpose and plan. He usually doesn't give it to you all at one fell swoop. He will usually give you little hints here and there of things he wants you to know. Your job is to listen— going back to taking care of your spirit— so that as God guides you, you know how to be obedient. Getting in the plans and purposes that God has for your life means that you have to Do what God says do, and he's not going to give you more responsibility if you have not already been responsible with the things he's already told you to do. How do you know what he's told you to do? You gotta read your Bible. You gotta know in the manual for life what he's already told you is wisdom for living. And then as you get to know him better, he will actually build out your plans. Have you ever looked at a builder's plan for a home It is not meant for the average person to read. There are markings that you have to go to school— architects go to school, construction workers have life experience, or they've been apprenticed to read the plans. What God wants to do is to apprentice you in reading your plans. He has a plan, but if he gave it to you today and said, go build your life, you would not know what to do with that. So what he does instead is says, hey, listen, I got the plans. And I'm going to tell you what you need to do when you need to do it. So we build your house, your life plan, over time. The best way for you to live out your purpose is to have a plan, and the best way for you to engage in that plan right now is to simply manage the plan you already have. What does that mean? Manage your time. Look at how you are spending your time. Look at your weeks and don't just allow the weeks of your life to pass without knowing how you spent them. So look at your week and decide What are the most important things for me to do this week? Uh, look at your weeks and decide, where do I wanna spend my time? Where am I wasting time? Where do I need to make time for preparing my food or for working out or spending time with friends or going to church? How do I put in my life the things that actually are important so that I don't wake up 5 years later and I don't know what I did? Manage your time and make sure that every week you are focusing on what's important so that you can see the needle of time moving forward in your life. Get a calendar. Use a paper or a digital one, it doesn't matter. Use an app. Everybody has a calendar on their phone. Don't waste your time. Time is the most precious commodity you will ever have. Don't waste time at work. When you get to work, if you hate your job, then figure out what can I learn, how can I grow. If you're gonna spend time on a job you don't like, at least when it's time to move on to another thing, walk away with a skill. Walk away with a good recommendation. Walk away with tenure underneath your belt. Walk away having learned the system, learned the process, made something better. Because every time you spend your time well, you take the blessing of that time with you into your next season. If you waste your time right now because you hate your job and you're just marking time, you're going to leave one day and you'll have nothing to take with you apart from the fact that I have 3 years of my life spent on a certain job.. And when someone says, well, what did you learn? What did you do? I would ask you, how did you use your time well? Even the time that you don't like, where you're still living at home, or maybe you don't have the job that you like, or maybe you haven't lost the weight that you want to lose, or maybe you're— you've just been in a part of a bad breakup. Every season of your life will yield fruit if you will let it, and if you will look for it. And what God does when he puts the purposes and plans that he has for your life together What does he do? He looks for the things you think were worthless. God wastes nothing. He will take the things that you were excited about, he will take the things that you thought were a part of the plan, but he will also reach back and take everything that you think was failed and move it forward. As you live, you learn. As you learn, you grow. And the good thing is that God looks at everything and he will use everything for the good. So here's what I want you to do. I want you to take care of your person. I want you to take care of your pocket. I want you to take care of your people. I want you to think about your partner, and I want you to engage with God's plan. The parts that you don't know, don't worry about it. The parts that you do know, take care of it. You may not like your job, but right now you're on it. So it is in God's plan for you to be a diligent employee, for you to show up to work on time, for you to make sure that you're learning and growing, taking opportunities that you make sure that you are being kind and life-giving with everybody you see. That is his plan, even if you don't like the job. So look at your life and realize that adulting is simply about being responsible for you, where you're not eating what your mother gave you, where you're not doing what people are making you do with your money, where you are not waiting for somebody to come to you in relationship, but you are making room to make relationship with other people. Where you don't stay in relationships that you feel some kind of way about just because you don't want to be alone, that you are proactive about being with the right people, partners in your life, and that you plan, that you look at your time, and that you choose to steward well the time that you have. Adulting simply means keep going in a responsible way. There's going to be a lot of things you don't know in your 20s and early 30s. That's okay. You're not supposed to know. The 20s and 30s are about gathering information, learning about who you are. And this is the last thought that I want to leave with you. I want to talk to you about your identity. Who are you? If the only answer that you have to that question is what people have told you all of your life, that will not be sufficient. You need to develop your own answer. For who you are. I went to my dad crying when I was 12 and said, I don't know who I am. And he said, you're Chrystal Hurst. But yes, who's Chrystal Hurst? I wrote about that. She's still there too. Now I know that without my mother and without my father, I will always be a daughter because I'm a daughter of a king. Without the people in my life who said, you're gifted, or you're smart, or Chrystal, you can do whatever you want to do, I realize that I'm a learner. Without people telling me in my life that, you know, maybe I'm lazy or maybe I'm bossy or maybe I'm hard-headed, I realize that I am persistent and that I have strong follow-through. When I think about who I am, I am a giver, I'm a lover of people, I'm a gatherer of people, I am fun, I am focused, and I like living life full. I also know that there are other ways that I define my life now. I'm a mother, I'm a grandmother, I'm a leader, I'm a business owner, I'm a teacher, I'm a, um, I'm involved in my church, or all the things that I do. But when you strip all those things away, who am I? I'm a daughter. I'm worthy. I'm a learner. I'm persistent. I'm a gatherer. I'm a lover of people, and I am an enjoyer of life. I choose to live. Your identity will be built in your 20s, 30s, and beyond as you continue to answer that question. If I move away from who people told me I am, who am I? That is the work of growth. It's okay if you struggle with identity. You are in— technically, the Erik Erikson stages of development says between 12 and 18, you are in the stage of identity and confusion. If you feel confused, it's fine. We all go through it. Don't sweat it. Just keep going, because in your 20s and 30s, you are psychologically in the stage out of your teens where you're building who you are, and that's okay. When you leave the environments that you've known all your life, you're supposed to feel a little unsteady. You're supposed to feel like, who am I minus all the things I've known? That's a part of changing. The struggle of adulthood is the shifting of the environments. It's almost like a rocket ship that is held up right before it launches, and right as it launches, all of the things that held it up fall away, and then it launches into the atmosphere and it moves through the blue sky into the bluer sky into the dark sky until it turns black and you're in outer space. The rocket ship was always a rocket ship, but it really didn't realize its potential until it left the supports behind. But the rocket ship taking off is noisy and it's loud and the ground shakes. And a lot of the shakiness that you feel as you're learning to navigate adulthood are simply a part of you taking off. I want you to know that you have a father just like me, and so you're a daughter or a son. 1 John 3:1 says, see what kind of love the Father has given us that we will be called the children of God. This is the reason why the world struggles and we don't, because we know who we are. I also want you to know that 1 John 3:2 says, dear friends, we're children of God And when Christ appears, we will be like him. You know what that means? That if you love God and want to know God's will for your life, there are certain things that you're not going to know until later. Be okay with that. Just like children become adults and don't know things when they're children, even in your early years of adulthood, there will be things that only God will reveal to you over time. So get comfortable living with the unknown. I love this verse, Jeremiah 1:5. Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, and before you were born, I set you apart. You don't have to know the purposes and plans for your life in full because you serve a God who already knows and who will tell you when you need to know. Get comfortable with living with the unknown and living on an as-need-to-know basis. I don't want you to let your expectations, your incomplete expectations, or your incomplete knowledge to make you think that you're doing something wrong. I want you to choose to believe that you are fill in the blank, that God will continue to teach you who you are. And while you're waiting in the midst of the unknown, that you have faith that he will give you what you need to know when you need to know, as you keep going. This is an unconventional faith because everybody right now in their 20s and 30s wants you to have it all together. It's okay to not. It's okay to be figuring it out. It's okay to grow. When I was 19, I learned a lot about life. I was a teen mom. I learned a lot about adulting, and I learned a lot about adulting fast. It was very rocky, very difficult. But I made it, and I want you to know you're gonna make it. You're gonna learn, you're gonna grow, you're gonna make mistakes. I don't want you to make avoidable mistakes, but you will make mistakes. And I want you to know that from a rocky 19 and a rocky 20s, here I am telling you a thing or two about what I know. My hope is that you would lean into this truth, that you are exactly who you need to be in this very moment. And the minute that you realize you need to change something, you have the power to change. I want you to know right now that regardless of how rocky it is, God is not done with you. You are simply in the process of growth and development. And I want you to know that everything that's happening in your life right now God will use it for good. Adulthood and adulting can be tumultuous, but know that even in the storm, the sun will shine again. So I gave you 5 things to work on, but the 6th, the bonus, is the most important thing: be comfortable with being uncomfortable. Fill in the blank with who you are, and if all you have is, I'm a son or a daughter of God, Go with that and just keep going. Be intentional, but just keep going. Be focused, but just keep going. Have fun, but just keep going and know that it'll come together. If it came together for me and my messy situation, listen, I know and believe it'll come together for you too. All right. Hope that was helpful. If it was, go on and let me know in the comments what struck you as the deepest thing, the most important thing that was meaningful for you. I really wanna know. I show up in those comments, y'all. And I also want you to make sure that you're hearing from me as much as you can, cuz I send out emails at least once a week. Go to chrystalevanshurst.com and leave your address right there so that I can tell you other things that don't always make it out on the videos and on the audios and all the things. All right. You gonna make it. Okay. I believe in you. And I believe that when God put you here, he had a plan in mind. Now I just need you to keep going so you see what the plan is fulfilled. All right. Talk to you later. See you next week.
