Growing pains are showing all around me. In all the various stages of life that my kids are in, each one is being forced to let go of what is behind to forge on toward what lies ahead. Growing up isn’t necessarily something that happens against our will–it just gradually pours us into a new mold to be shaped in different ways. It’s bittersweet. Sometimes it’s even painful to grow and change and say goodbye to what we once recognized as the way life works. But growing up is necessary and good.

I was a kid who didn’t want to grow up. I liked being little and having all my little things that I loved. If I was upset, I would go to my room and gather up as many stuffed animals as my freckled arms could possibly hold and I would hug them tightly until I felt better. I liked this system of being easily comforted by my childish things. I liked being the baby of the family, and I had no desire that I can remember to move to a new stage of life. In fact, when God showed me my need for Him as a child, I argued with Him. When He was clearly prompting me to respond to the gospel, I told Him I was too young and would take that big step when I was a little older. I went home from that revival meeting that night, and my wonderful, gracious God simply would not allow me to rest or to think about anything else until I completely surrendered to Him. He poured me into a new mold and shattered the old one. A heart of stone became a heart of flesh, and in my childish way I realized that we all have to grow up sometime.

Within the next week I’ll turn 49 years old, and I am still in the throes of growing pains. It’s funny how there are phases of life when we think, “Ok, I must be a grown up now,” only to learn that God still has so many new molds to press us into. He is never satisfied to leave us where we are, still unformed in certain ways. He never stops knocking off those rough edges, and He never loses sight of who He is turning us into.

It isn’t easy. Growing up is a cooperative work between God and us. He brings us to the phase or circumstance that will shape us in the ways we need to be shaped, and we hang on for dear life as He teaches us how to be more like Jesus. A few days, months, years later, we find that we’re comfortably resting in the mold when He presents a new one–a whole new shape, a new function, a new understanding, a deeper trust, a leap of faith, a more intimate relationship with the God of the Universe. He will mold us in this way until we die. It’s one of the most beautiful things about being a child of God: we never, ever stop growing up, because He never, ever quits making us more like Jesus.

Sometimes, back in my stuffed animal hugging years, if I felt any kind of sudden pain in my legs, my parents would say, “Those are just growing pains.” I don’t know if physical growing pains are actually a real thing, but somehow that always made me feel better. It seemed like a good reason to feel random pain: it was a sign I was growing like I should. So now when I begin to feel those familiar spiritual pangs, those hard times where I learn hard lessons, it helps me to think to myself, “Those are just growing pains.” Those tears are a sign that God has more for me. A more abundant life. A deeper love. A better way of thinking. The pain is worth the growth, so I pray He never stops squeezing me or my children into those molds that help us know Him more.