Anniversaries make you get reflective, and for me, the 10th anniversary of Boundless this week is no exception. As someone who's been there from the start, I wanted to sit down and write something especially meaningful and fresh and profound for the occasion. To my embarrassment, the opening line that kept popping into my mind was that worn-out cliché, My, how we've grown.

Yet cliché or not, the phrase applies. The thing that strikes me most is not just that Boundless has grown in its audience or its design quality or its variety of talented authors. (Though it has.) It's how we've grown personally. And by "we," I mean writers and readers alike.

Since Boundless was launched, it's tried to provide mentors for young adults, helping readers think through their life with God, their relationships with each other, and their view of the larger world. That doesn't mean the mentors have completed the process of maturing, intellectually, emotionally or spiritually. This side of heaven, there's always a long way to go.

I can't speak for our other writers, but when I look back 10 years, I know I've changed.

For one thing, I'm slower to form opinions these days. This isn't because I don't want to come to firm conclusions, but because I want to get it right when I do. I've seen myself make enough mistakes in cases where the answer isn't clear, either because the cases are complex or because I simply don't know enough — and I've seen the spirit of pride move me to overestimate my knowledge or judgment. Precisely because I am sure of some things (e.g., that no one comes to God except through Jesus Christ, and that some things, like abortion, are wrong), I want to make sure I make confident claims at the right time, for the right reason.

I'm also less combative than I used to be. (More about that here.) Re-reading my older columns, I know I'd change or delete some phrases now. This isn't because I want to avoid controversy per se, but because I want to avoid needless provocation. Precisely because it is necessary to say things that offend some people sometimes (e.g., that no one comes to God except through Jesus Christ, and that some things, like abortion, are wrong), I want to make sure I'm doing it at the right time, for the right reason.

As I've been growing, I've seen readers grow up too, sometimes making big gains in short periods of time.

I did a stint as Boundless editor for a year-plus, and during that time I saw much of the correspondence and wrote some of the replies. Some people were upset with us, of course: That was to be expected. (It's an axiom of journalism that people are more likely to write in when they're mad than when they're glad.) What I didn't expect was how many people were willing to change their minds or acknowledge their own errors. They'd tell us that they'd judged us too quickly or reacted too defensively — that they'd been trying to justify unwise or immoral approaches to their relationships, or buying into worldly but unbiblical ideas. Not all of them displayed that attitude, of course. But far more of them did than you'd find in many audiences, including some Christian ones.

This is rewarding to see, especially because not everyone in the world does grow in maturity. Many people don't grow much at all as they get older. And some grow worse.

American culture works overtime to keep us as childish as possible for as long as possible. We're supposed to spend far more than we can afford, and to look to others to make everything work out OK, somehow. We're supposed to seek our personal gratification above everything else, to find much of it in possessions and entertainment, and to jettison relationships that don't deliver what we want.

It would be nice to think wisdom and maturity come with age and experience. That would certainly suit me, both because I'm gaining in both those categories and because it's often true. At times, though, the opposite happens. People may lock into attitudes in their youth that only harden over time. They decide they've got the world, or other people, all figured out, and no one can tell them they might be wrong. They hang onto those attitudes all the more stubbornly as they go along, as if admitting major misjudgments would render their lives meaningless.

By contrast, sometimes it's easier to grow when you're younger and may be more aware that you don't have everything all figured out. Though I don't see the Boundless mail much any more, I still see reminders of how that can happen outside of my work as well.

A couple weeks ago a young guy I didn't know ripped me at length over a short, offhand comment I'd made in an e-mail to some friends. (Ever hit "reply all" and say something in the belief that you're talking to people who agree with you, but fail to notice that there's one name on there you don't recognize? That's what I'd done.) His reaction was over the top relative to what I wrote, and he made some unfair assumptions about me. Sometimes I let such things go (I'm used to them in my line of work), but this time I decided to call him on it. In the process, I urged him to consider why he'd lash out so emotionally at a total stranger.

I was ready for him to shoot back a defensive response. As it turned out, he was far from defensive. He not only apologized, he forthrightly stepped out and made himself vulnerable, thoughtfully and insightfully laying out a history of emotional issues that he's still struggling with. He made it very clear that this was not the way he wants to be. I came away with a ton of respect for him. Long after I've forgotten the original angry accusations (they're fading already), I'll remember the man who was so humble and repentant, who cared not about justifying his first reaction, but about making things right the second time around.

That's what growth looks like. I'm grateful to have seen so much of it in so many people over the last 10 years. And grateful to God that the process can keep going at any and every age.