Processing Change

It’s amazing how much life can change over time. I look back to two years ago and realize that I am a completely different person now than I was then. I thought what I knew then was all that life had to offer. Now I’m here at this stage of my life, and now I think this is all there is. Two years from now maybe I’ll be in the same position, and it will be an endless cycle until my life is ended. Or until I realize that now is not all we have, it’s only all we know.

We spend a lot of time in now. Actually, we spend our whole lives in now. To me, now means right this second. This breath, this movement, this moment in life where I can experience what is right in front of me to the fullest extent. Now is all we know. We can look back on the past, and we can try our best to plan out our future, but ultimately, the only thing we can be sure of is right now (and the afterlife, but that’s a whole different topic).

Sometimes we get so trapped in the here and now, we are blinded to change. For whatever reason, we like to make life as predictable as possible. You wake up every morning, brush your teeth and then take a shower. After that you grab a cup of coffee, sit down and watch television for a couple minutes. Once you’re done with all that, you’re off to see what your day holds. All of us have a different morning routine, but I’m going to go out on a limb here and say we all get very frustrated when those routines change unexpectedly. You’re parents didn’t make the coffee this morning so now you’re stuck doing it, and you lose a valuable two minutes that you will never get back. Sometimes the smallest changes seem to ruin your whole day if you let them.

I think we get most frustrated by little things like that when we aren’t living for right now. I think when our predictable lives are interrupted (to a larger extent than simply a morning routine); we are really stuck in the past. We love the things that are familiar to us, and we avoid things that are different. When we’re sad, we go to the people who are closest to us for comfort because they are familiar. It would be incredibly peculiar to go to a stranger and talk out your problems. If you did that, whomever you choose as the lucky person to hear your life story would probably think you’re crazy. Because we love predictability so much, we often go back to what we have done or what has happened in the past. The past will always be familiar because we will always know what it has held.

It’s fear. Fear is driving us to live such consistent lives. Fear makes us angry, and it makes us frustrated when something different comes along because we are not comfortable with it. We fear change. We avoid change because we don’t know the consequences that may come with it, whether they are good or bad. That’s something to be fearful of. Our instincts take us back to what is comfortable. Change is uncomfortable; no matter what kind of change it is. Sometimes we need to be uncomfortable for a little while in order to find something more comfortable. Sometimes our hearts need to be broken first before they can be fixed. Sometimes contradictions are the reason for living. 

We are only going to live life to its fullest extent when we embrace change. We are imperfect people who serve a perfect God. He desires for us to become more and more like him every day. Because we are imperfect people, we require a lot of change. Every day, we should be different than we were the day before. Change is not only a key to our life, but also a key to our spiritual journey.

If we are unwilling to take the key and unlock the doors that lead us to become more Christ like, we will never change. If we never change, then we really aren’t trusting God and what he has for our lives, right? Think about it.

“I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength” – Philippians  4:13