Our feet are bolted to the conveyor belt. We careen with merciless steadiness toward old age, so we may as well do so with a battle cry. I write to you, young adult Christian, from my last week as a twenty-something. For most of my professional life, I have tried to downplay my age so as to not be underestimated for it (I once buzzed my hairline to accentuate its recession), but now I feel the need to write as a twenty-something while I still can.
I feel good about my twenties. I'm grateful. God has been good and faithful to me the whole time and I'm grateful for the ever-growing sense of longevity that is present in my Christian walk. It's humbling and it's empowering. I've been a particularly hyperactive twenty-something. I was a homeowner by 22, married by 23, an author by 27, and the father of four kids by 28. At 29, I'm incredibly thankful to be a family man, to have my dream job, to be secure, and to have my doctorate in my sights. I'm grateful. I wrestled with whether or not to write this because I truly do not want to come across as braggadocious. You see, I'm just grateful. When you write something mundane that downplays your life, people complain that you're petty. When you write something significant about a major development in your life, people complain that you're bragging. So, who is qualified to write about Millennial life and what is left as acceptable to write? So far, most articles about twentyness by modern twenty-somethings are the self-fulfilling laments of adultescents who bemoan what they perceive to be our generation's plight. They underachieve, come across as entitled, and sneer at the world through horn rimmed glasses that peek over ironically expensive lattes flavored heavily with hot liquid opinion. Millennials, we have a lousy reputation, but that is not our name. It is true that many of us have squandered our youth and lost our faith all while blaming our parents, but it is simply not possible to accurately label an entire generation. Sure, we crossed the threshold of adulthood only to be greeted by a barren economic wasteland, but every generation has had its challenges and ours is actually not that bad. In fact, some Millennials with ambition and initiative have actually thrived precisely because their more talented peers pout from the sidelines. There is a reason that clinical psychologist Meg Jay's TED talk went viral. To a generation of Peter Pans begrudgingly coming of age, their adult peers seem weird. Having been born March 25, 1985, I write from the older half of the Millennial generation to the younger half born in the mid nineties or so. I hope to write the article I searched for, but could not find when I entered my twenties. May you grow to be weird.
Tithe, save, and invest immediately. I'm so glad I shook off the jocular jabs my fellow college freshmen gave me when I would mention growth stock mutual funds and emerging markets. I'm glad in a deep way that is hard to express and I'm not just talking about the sense of financial security that comes with savings: I'm talking about having gone through a financial hurricane when my son's treatment accrued over $3 million in medical expenses before insurance. Good grief. No one tells you you're going to have a son who is born without a trachea and that he will require groundbreaking clinical field trial surgeries every few days of his life for months on end. No one tells you how expensive funerals are. So, yeah, I'm really glad I began saving early. Freaking save and save now not because you want to spend your money on something stupid, but because one day your helpless child may need you and your beautiful sweet bride will look to you and your church to provide. Save. If you have a checking account, look into simple investing apps like Acorns to get acquainted with the stock market. Consider hiring the services of a C.P.A. your first professional tax year and look into financial advisers from ethical companies to help get your retirement started. From day one, contribute the maximum amount to your 401 (k) to which your employer will reciprocate.
Tithe and give. Even as we payed off medical bills, we never stopped tithing. Now, we look back on that season and are grateful for the chance to have worshiped in that way. It was refining. It was difficult, but it was amazing. Tithe because we are commanded to tithe (which is absolutely reason enough in itself), but also tithe because your heart overflows. Prioritize ten percent of your income toward ministry because ministry is a priority in your heart. The collection time during worship should be the most joyful time of the worship service for you. Oh, the honor it is to give just something to the God who gave us everything. Beyond your tithe, experience what it is like to give generously. Leave irrationally huge tips. Give drive-through workers generous financial gifts. Overwhelm a homeless person with restaurant gift cards. Give online to ethical causes that stir your heart. Honestly, this was a revelation for me. I used to get really irritated when my local Christian radio station would raise the funds they needed just to stay in business, but working in the church helped me realize how stupid that was of me. The basic reality is that electricity and water cost money and money is necessary to keep ministries ministering. Do you expect non Christians to give to Christian ministries? How do you expect them to keep their lights on unless Christians like you give? So, give.
This comes down to your monthly budget. Write out all of your monthly expenses and subtract them from your monthly income. Not only should you be living in such a way that your income is greater than your expenses (including your tithe), but you should have enough left over to save and invest. If you are saving each month, you are growing wealth. If your income equals your spending, you're stuck. If it is surpassed by your spending, you're doing it wrong. The bigger chunk you start your Roth IRA with and the earlier you start it, the more you will see the absolute magic of compound interest work in your favor. Saving just $100 and putting it in a growth stock mutual fund that averages 12% interest in returns for 40 years yields $1.176 million (Dave Ramsey)! Do you get that? Even if you make a modest income, investing this way in your twenties makes you a millionaire in your sixties and the knowledge that you will one day be a millionaire motivates you and does away with the immense distraction that is the fear of financial ruin.
Read the whole Bible. Do it.
I'm glad I stuck to my "weird" views on marrying young. My bride is my best friend and my fellow world traveler. It is absolutely the most obtuse false dichotomy I have ever read that one should postpone marriage for the sake of travel. My bride and I have traveled the world together. The last article I read that posited travel and marriage as somehow mutually exclusive was written by someone who had been to half the number of countries I've been to since my wedding day. What?
Now, we are planning our life together around the reality that we will be empty-nesters in our early forties. We hope, if it's within God's will, to transition back to a couple of mid-level sports cars from our current fleet of baby-hauling S.U.V.'s when our youngest gets his license in fifteen years - long before my hair (or at least all of it) is gray. Though, my wife may prefer to keep her gargantuan baby-hauling bus. I still chuckle when I see this tiny woman roar up in her monstrous truck full of rambunctious little Campbells.
I'm glad I held onto my virginity until my wedding day. Yes, this is still a thing. Yes, it is achievable. Yes, it is ultimately worth it. Yes, this commitment contributed to our marrying young. No, I'm not so unattractive that this was easy for me to accomplish. No, you will not enter your marriage with a black belt in sex this way. No, that is not a bad thing. No, I will not go into illustrated details as to why.
I'm glad we had kids early. "Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are children born in one's youth," reads Psalm 127:4. I have been young, single, and without children. I have been and now am married with children. So, I know firsthand what each lifestyle is like and I pick being a dad. Being a parent will make your life far more complicated, but the rewards eclipse the challenges - even in the worst case scenario when your child dies. Parenthood is absolutely above and beyond the greatest estimations I had of it before I became a dad on April 27, 2010. That God brought me into fatherhood somewhat early (for our generation at least) means that I get to spend more of my lifetime in this irrevocable bliss. Again, I'm grateful. It takes some daggum endurance to keep up with active kids. It takes a healthy back and good knees to hike up mountains and trek around the Magic Kingdom thrice with a toddler strapped to your back. Our kids have had some incredible adventures and most of them have been extremely taxing for us physically. I will let you know how I feel in my fifties, but I suspect that waiting to have kids would have made this aspect of our life more difficult.
For that matter, I may one day be able to tell you exactly the difference between hiking with a kid on your back at 29 versus hiking with a kid on your back at 49 because, if my oldest son chooses to live out his life on a timeline similar to mine, I will be a grandfather before I turn 50! Because of their youth, young fathers can realistically dream about their futures as patriarchs of large extended families. This exciting prospect alone is reason to at least consider marrying young and starting a family quickly. Being a young dad is awesome. Sure, the lone wolf has freedoms that I should not have, but I am happy to have lain those down at the altar of my family. It is a worthy cause and has turned out to be a fantastic transaction for me. Furthermore, I draw an immense sense of drive to earn and achieve more because I must provide for my family. The stakes are high, so I am highly motivated. On average, fathers earn 40% more than men of the same age who have not yet had kids.
By the way, we just passed the initial approval stage to start the process of adopting a little girl from Hong Kong!
Take care of yourself physically. Browsing your Facebook feed ten years from now, you'll see your friends happily gaining weight without realizing it. You may see old pictures of yourself and sigh. I have. The activities I was involved in through college kept me extremely fit despite what I would later realize was an utterly horrendous diet. After graduation, when I stopped doing those activities but kept eating the same way, science happened. So, take care of yourself.
When you become a parent, this becomes much more difficult. There have been many times when I have chosen to give my workout time to my bride and/or my boys. When I'm heading out the door to the clubhouse in my workout clothes and hear through my ear buds, "Daddy, come snuggle with me before bedtime," from the couch, my duties as a father utterly trump my need to exercise. It is better to be a slightly pudgy dad who is present than a ripped dad who misses bedtime, but you don't always have to make that choice. There have been seasons in my life when the middle of the night has been the only time I could possibly exercise. It's actually pretty enjoyable to have the gym and the jogging trail to yourself. Well, almost to yourself. When I lived in Florida, on three different occasions, I encountered an alligator, a particularly irritable opossum, and an armadillo while running late at night.
Speak wisely, or do not speak. This lesson learned almost kept me from writing this article. I'm self-conscious about how I will one day feel about these very words and there is a good chance that I may end up deleting this whole thing... just like I deleted all 30 of the articles I wrote for my livejournal when I was your age. Things I wrote in my early twenties make my skin crawl today. At the time, my own writing seemed deeply impactful to me, but I later realized that it was almost all cringe-worthy garbage. Ugh. Perhaps it was the fact that my own musings seemed profound to me that made them terrible. You see, I was "wise in my own eyes" which Proverbs 3:7, 26:5, 12, 16, 28:11, and Isaiah 5:21 tells us is a very bad place to be. The perceived depth of your words is often inversely proportional to the number of times you contribute to a conversation. I learned this the hard way, learned it the hard way again, and lately have been somewhat of an internet recluse to avoid learning it the hard way yet again. In another sense, I feel like I got that stuff out of my system and that my former writings were necessary for my putting in the 10,000 hours (Gladwell's Outliers) that would ready me for a career in publishing - this mediocre article notwithstanding. So, yeah, I have a complex about anything I have written or spoken years ago, but I try not to be outright ashamed of my early work. I hope that's just symptomatic of the progress the Holy Spirit is making in me. I hope.
It seems like the bombastic fool would be constantly impressed with his own words, so let's try not to be like him.
Consider moving to a new city; even if just for awhile. I grew up in Pensacola, Florida. It's a great beach town full of incredibly kind people. Though the surf leaves something to be desired, I have yet to see a more beautiful beach anywhere in the world. However, no matter how great your hometown is, there are some firsthand lessons you can learn only outside of it. Living somewhere else is the only way you can know beyond assumption that your hometown is where you would choose to live. Proximity to family comes with some incredible advantages (childcare is ridiculously expensive), but it can also inhibit the growth of your marriage and can potentially slow your own personal maturation into adulthood.
Distance from family also forms a crucible wherein marriages can be strengthened. When you and your spouse are in a conflict, you cannot flee to literally familiar territory, but must stay and work out a resolution. Moving to a new city and learning your way around is electrifying and empowering. As a boy, I thought that I would never move. These days, I get restless after a few years in the same city. This is also a sign of the times that people from our generation often must move away for job opportunities whereas past generations tended to remain near their unofficial dynastic homeland because their dreams could come true right where their feet were planted.
Owe money to no one; not even your parents. Do not underestimate how comparatively drastic you must be to eliminate debt and how weird your lifestyle will seem compared to that of your peers as you do what is necessary to avoid getting into debt in the first place. This is some of the most spectacular advice my father ever gave me. In a conversation regarding his coworker who was cash strapped to his own father-in-law, he said, "Jess, never owe anyone anything. Then, you'll be your own man." He was absolutely right. You will be amazed at how healthy your relationships with family members are when money has nothing to do with them. Being debt free is fantastic. It's also weird for our generation. Some Millennials want to get married, have kids, and join gyms, but they feel that it would unwise in light of their financial debt. How frustrating. Learn from their pain. For some, this may require that you live a markedly less luxurious lifestyle than some of your Facebook friends for a time, but that is more than okay.
Recognize the college bubble for what it is. It is a spectacular fantasy world where unaccomplished people are respected for what they intend to attempt - something almost exclusive to academia. It is a profession wherein the fear of losing one's job is often practically eliminated - something almost exclusive to academia. You can teach religion as an atheist. You can bellow against capitalism as your parents pay your bills. It's wonderful. It is a well-insulated airport terminal where people are supposed to pass through on their way to adulthood, but where many choose instead to take up residence through their mid twenties. They hang around for a later flight and leave strapped with credit card and student loan debt. The independence of the college lifestyle in a new city is a mirage, but it can be a beneficial mirage. It whets the appetite for true long-term sustainable independence. It makes you crave the real thing and makes you warily conscious of the fact that your parents, your student loans, or perhaps even your scholarship dollars, are helping you pay your bills. Recognize the college world for what it is and keep your eye on the finish line.
Respect the true bride of Christ. Serve in church. Fellow Millennials who are angry with the church, I too have faced deep pain in my life. I have buried a child. I have lost friends too soon. I have been hurt by people in the church. I have been verbally (and even physically in one instance) attacked and slandered by church people to whom I had been nothing but kind and loving. It happens. However, we should not define the church by the lowest common denominator of the very worst behaviors by its least accurate representatives. The number of those who have hurt me are counted with double digits, but those who have blessed me number thousands. Of course sharing a mission alongside other people who are just as messed up as we are is going to bring pain, but that does not absolve us of the Great Commission and it does not undo what God's Word says plainly about His church. Yes, your feelings matter, Millennial. Yes, the terrible ordeal you may have faced would leave anyone wounded. Some apostate Millennials have been skewered by groups of Satan's representatives masquerading as a church, but most of the testimonies I've read from the Millennial exodus were written by people who just need to buck up already. If the church is completely messed up, then change the church, or change churches. Then, if the church is still messed up, it's partially your own fault.
Where in the Bible did we get this notion that nothing bad would ever happen to us? Have we forgotten why the epistles were written? When church leaders sin, the people in their church are not somehow given license to sin too. When standing in judgement before God, we cannot point to the failures of our church leaders to excuse our own sin. There must be forgiveness among God's forgiven people. We must, as Peter exhorts, forgive the grievances we have with one another and love one another deeply from the heart. We must, as Paul describes, use our unique sets of gifts to assimilate into a force greater than our set of individuals. We are broken loaves and fish, but that is the stuff Jesus uses to feed thousands
You see, these slightly messed up congregations are all we have. So join one. You're a little messed up too, so you should fit right in with us. There is so much ministry to be done. There are so many mission trips to go on and you are of the ideal age and life phase to go on one. Serve alongside your fellow messed up Christians and maybe the Holy Spirit's sanctification will bring healing. Maybe He will make something new from the pieces - from we motley Millennials.
Now, on to my thirties. Tune in for the next installment a decade from now.
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