Shifting Winds

Last week at work we did a professional development day on "managing change." It seemed timely since we just moved our offices, numerous people changed positions within the organization and our director is working toward her exit come next summer. It was helpful to hear about the ways we can be empowered through change - how we can choose to see it differently, even embrace it!

Alright, before I get too enthusiastic I should mention I wasn't born with the "change is exciting" gene. Eventually I get there, but for starters I think of all the doom and gloom. Can I get a witness?
Well, anyway, here's the deal - everything around me is changing all the time. That's life, right?

I think back to my life 10 years ago, 5 years ago, even last year... it looks so different than it does today. Ten years ago I had graduated from high school and was missing all my friends who went away to college. My Mom was only a year out of her bone marrow transplant and my Grandfather had died right around Halloween. Life was crazy- unpredictable- scary, even. I also was just meeting a guy I would later think I'd marry, Alex.
Five years ago I was preparing to attend Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia, Arkansas. Alex and I had been broken up nearly two years and in that time I met the lover of my soul, Jesus Christ. Life was full of change, but it was painful in a good way. My dear friend, Rachel, was waiting for me at OBU and I was so excited to be leaving home for the first time... at 23. It was just far enough away to feel exciting, but close enough to drive home on the weekends if I was homesick. That following May Rachel died in a car accident and my life was flipped once again.
One year ago I was still living in the first year of grief after my Mom's death. I had just had the summer of my life- oddly enough-- God is good! I was surrounded by the most outstanding group of friends and was experiencing God's affection for me on a whole new level. I was sad, very very sad, but there was also an ever present joy that couldn't be denied. I was also in a graduate program at Emerson for journalism - drowning by the day and realizing quickly that it was NOT a suitable field for me. :) I began the journey into what I like to call "real adulthood." No more school, no more loans... just me, my job and my bills.

Today I'm in management with my organization and being challenged daily with more responsibility and trust from my peers. I'm really feeling invested in and pushed... and for some reason it makes part of me want to run. Can I really be an adult? Can I handle all the responsibility people are so quick to bestow upon me? Will I fail? Will I let people down? Cost people money? Is there any turning back now?
I've realized I need to come back to a place that praises God for change. I can't imagine if my life were the same as it had been so many years ago... or even last fall. Life had to change... is has to change. One of the points of our professional development was this, "Resisting change uses all your mental energy and puts it into fighting... you may miss what God's trying to teach you."

When I look back, I not only have zero interest in reliving or prolonging any of those seasons, but I see how I've grown and how God has pruned me. I have so far to go, but I know that he is sanctifying me and most times through change.

Why in the world do we cling to the familiar? What would happen if every time change was presented we resisted and thwarted it? Would we be happy as we dream we would be?