I’ll never forget having lunch in the St. Louis area with a psychologist with whom I worked on weekends like the Great Banquet. I don’t remember what we were discussing, but somehow our conversation moved to the stages of life we go through at different ages.

It goes like this. When we are in our teen years we search for acceptance as we are growing and transitioning into adulthood. In our twenties and thirties we deeply desire recognition as we try to become a success, making a name for ourselves. In our forties and fifties, we seek meaning, realizing that we haven’t and probably won’t reach some of dreams, or, that we have met our earlier goals for ourselves and found our achievements to be empty and unfulfilling. Finally, in our sixties and older, we move back to acceptance realizing that we are growing older and can’t do all that we once could.

Does that sound familiar to you? Frankly, I have found it to be pretty accurate as I reflect on my past and experience the present. Being in a season of acceptance again is not a bad thing. My wife, Alice, and I have often said that we have enjoyed each season, but feel very good about being in our sixties. In many ways our relationship with God and each other has never been better.

Being in a season of acceptance again does, however, send me scurrying back, in my mind, to my adolescence and to remember all of my insecurities and anxieties. Could it be that grandparents are really best suited for understanding teen-agers since they lived through those years and are now often in a similar season?

Harkening back to those earlier years makes me remember how inept I felt around girls when I began to realize they didn’t have “cooties” and were actually something very special. While I had a very positive relationship with my mother, since my parents were divorced, I didn’t have a dad to model for me just how a guy should act around those of the feminine persuasion. That added to my insecurities.

I’ll never forget Leroy, a guy in our church youth group who was couple of years older than me. It seemed that he got along so well with the girls and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why. Now you must know that he weighed about 50 pounds less and didn’t have acne, but I didn’t take those factors into consideration. Leroy squinted a lot, probably having astigmatism. I thought that might be what I was missing, so whenever I was around a cute girl, I made a conscious effort to squint. As you might imagine, it wasn’t at all helpful.

Another source of insecurity in my junior high years came from the fact that I was a country boy who lived in a home that didn’t have indoor plumbing and had attended a one-room country school. I was bused each day to a school each day in Paw Paw, which had a population of about 2500.

In the fall of my eighth grade year I was in the junior high band where I played last chair coronet. I was invited to help out the senior high band do their halftime show at a football game. The first chair coronet player and one of the most popular guys in my class invited me to stay at his house after school. I was in awe of what was happening, but felt very ill at ease.

I’ll never forget his mother serving us a light supper of sandwiches, milk, and cookies before we went to the pre-game set up for the halftime show. I was very self-conscious, wanting to do everything with proper manners. I couldn’t believe the challenge with which I was presented. As I started to take my first drink of milk, there was a fly swimming laps around my glass. I tried not to let on that I saw it. What would I do? There was only one possibility. I closed my eyes and took a long swallow and the fly was gone. I wanted so badly to be accepted even though I felt so inferior.

Dear friends, it’s crucial that, by God’s grace and the sensitivity of the Holy Spirit, we look for ways to understand and love people in different seasons of life than we find ourselves. Dream of how our life together in every arena in which we find ourselves could be enriched and nurtured with that understanding.

Finally, my mind goes to an excerpt from Philippians 4:11 where the Apostle Paul says, “…For I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances.” I pray that you will experience this kind of contentment in whatever season of life you find yourself.