Beyond Neverland: What Funerals and Peter Pan Taught Me About Growing Up

When I look back at my childhood, I can honestly say it was wonderful. For the most part, my life was stable. My mom was a schoolteacher. My dad was a pastor at a local church. We lived a comfortable, middle-class life.

When I was younger, we lived in Mississippi. My mom would take my two older sisters with her to school. I stayed home with my dad a couple of days a week. Those days with Dad weren’t spent at a typical playground. Instead, they consisted of playing outside, attending funerals, and visiting hospitals and nursing homes.

To be completely honest, there are times even now when communicating with senior citizens is easier for me. It’s tougher to communicate with my own peers. It wasn’t until I grew older that I realized most people haven’t attended nearly as many funerals as I have.

Over the years, I’ve heard my dad preach more times than I can count. I’m sad to say I don’t remember every sermon. Still, one sermon has stayed with me my entire life. He titled it: “The Peter Pan Christian.”

The heart of the message was simple. Many people give their lives to Christ. But, they never grow or mature. They are happy to stay exactly where they are—spiritually stuck in childhood. This concept has been a compass for me. As I grew up, I saw older people desperately trying to act like twenty-year-old’s. This always made me feel sad. It was as if they were trapped in a stage of life they were never meant to occupy forever.

Recently, I watched the movie Finding Neverland. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it. Johnny Depp and Kate Winslet are an amazing duo, and the story is deeply moving.

The film follows J.M. Barrie, the creator of Peter Pan, on his journey to find inspiration. One of his plays fails massively. After this failure, Barrie starts taking his dog for walks in the park every morning. There, he meets four young brothers and their widowed mother, Sylvia Llewelyn Davies.

Over the next few months, his interactions with the Davies boys awaken a childlike imagination. This inspires him to write his most famous play. Barrie finds a way to capture that sense of innocence. He turns it into something beautiful—a story about a boy who never wants to grow up.

Watching the film made me think back to my dad’s sermon. There is a time for childhood wonder. But, there is also a profound beauty in growing up. This beauty becomes especially obvious when life gets hard. In Neverland, nothing ever changes. But in the real world, life includes hospitals, military moves, and twelve years of marriage. Growth is where the real magic happens.

As time passes and seasons change, we grow and mature. After a hopefully long, full life of happiness and adventure, we eventually move on from this world. Ecclesiastes 3:1-14 tells us:

“There is a time for everything. There is a season for every activity under the heavens: A time to be born and a time to die. There is a time to plant and a time to uproot… a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance… He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart. Yet, no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.”

Time is beautiful, yet at the same time short and precious. Growing up is hard, but it’s something we all have to do. Pretending is fun. Still, at some point, we have to wake up. We must move ahead and embrace the season we are in.

Now it’s your turn. Do you ever find yourself wishing for ‘Neverland’? Or have you found beauty in the seasons of growing up? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.