(Photo by Selma Komisky)

Tackle Adulting While Young

By Amanda Zarate

If you are a child of divorced parents, you likely know a thing or two about adulting.  Those mundane, yet necessary, life tasks. Cooking, cleaning, laundry, dishes, grocery shopping, and even paying bills often falls on the shoulders of tweens and teens of broken homes. Or maybe you have great parents who have taught you that chores are part of training up a child in the Lord. As tough as it is to have to take on your parents to-do list, you might be surprised at some of the long term benefits when you choose to be good at adulting.

The Clorox Company recently conducted an interesting study and found that out of 2000 people, 80% were more relaxed and 72% slept better when they cleaned regularly. They even found that children who were given chores were 64% more likely to show empathy and 60% more likely to help others as an adult. Now, I’m sure Clorox has its reasons to want you to spend your days cleaning, but if you think about it, learning to enjoy cleaning means most of your to do-list will be spent doing something you like!

We all have things we need to do, but God is always more interested in who we are becoming than what we are accomplishing. We can choose to be a leader or a slave by the way we choose to handle our tasks.

Proverbs 12:24 states, “Work hard and become a leader; be lazy and become a slave” (NLT). Adulting can be hard because it’s never ending. To be a leader requires a person to consistently handle matters successfully. This may entail taking on a hundred mini chores or one difficult one, but a leader gets it done.

In the business of getting things done, or adulting, remember ultimately we are adulting for Jesus. We are reminded of this in Colossians 3:23-24, “Work willingly at whatever you do, as though you were working for the Lord rather than for people. Remember that the Lord will give you an inheritance as your reward, and that the Master you are serving is Christ” (NLT). How you choose to take on or avoid chores speaks volumes about who you are and what else God will give you to steward.

So put that load of wash in and don’t wait for someone else to do for you what you can do for yourself. Be a leader in the area God has given you to take care of. What you do today and the attitude you have while doing it will pay off later as the Lord entrusts you with bigger and more important tasks on top of your daily chores. Imagine moving out of your parents home and trying to figure out how to grocery shop, cook and wash dishes before you eat a meal. You would be famished by the time you figured it all out! It’s much better to learn basic household duties while you’re young and master them so that when the opportunity arises for you to step into more exciting roles, you can confidently take on more.

Finally, be a cheerful giver. We all know God loves a cheerful giver – so be one. Give of your time to help out around the house, give of your finances and buy your mom and dad something special at the store, give of your organizational skills and cooking and baking skills, or your mechanic skills. Turn on some tunes and give tidying up a whirl. Tackle adulting with a smile, knowing Jesus is watching and He is so pleased with who you are becoming.