change is inevitable; growth is chosen

I will always have green grass

where I water it; where I nurture it

where I prune it; where I’m willing to get my hands dirty

and dig up the ground to see

what’s underneath

again and again and again

---

Q: What tools have you learned best help you to let go? What practices do you employ to mend and heal?

For myself, I’m learning that my peace is closely connected to my willingness to embrace what’s unfamiliar. The thing is — my life has typically been a pattern of that. Embracing unfamiliar people in unfamiliar territory year after year. Accepting unfamiliar circumstances in unfamiliar spaces. As far back as I can remember, discomfort has always been my norm. For a long long time, I believed that was it for me — my life, for whatever reason, would always be a process of things changing and nothing being the same as it once was ever.

People say that’s a sign of growth. Change can be beneficial. From where I’m sitting, it’s only proven to be beneficial for people who might not always experience change. I’ve learned that I struggle with change. I fight with it because, for as long as I can remember, everything about my life is always constantly changing. Always moving around from home to home, from school to school, from city to city, from state to state... shifting through environments, people, spaces. It’s seemed to become the norm for me year after year, and the sense of normalcy other people experienced wasn’t my own.

For quite a long time, I’ve craved that normalcy. My life had never, not once, been what I imagine is “normal”: having friends from childhood, growing up in the same house, in the same neighbourhood, being raised by the same person/people from birth, going to the same school, living in the same place, being around family all the time... Never having to uproot everything and start over again and again and again.

Some people crave that kind of lifestyle shift — I can understand the appeal although I wouldn’t recommend it. All I’d ever wanted was for something to remain familiar in the world outside of me, which was so full of unfamiliar things. Nothing ever did. Nothing was ever really the same besides the knowing that things are going to change.

I’ve resented change for as long as I’ve been aware of it, which as I’m writing this literally means only a few minutes. I’d always seen change as an eternally unreliable and unwanted shift in my life, and it’s been that way since such an early age. Moving around a lot does that. Changing schools a lot does that. Having other people make decisions for you that you have to agree with because you’re a child does that. There’s a lot of bitterness there, I know. A lot of unforgiveness there, I know. It’s also the truth for this moment.

For as long as I can remember, I’d always wanted to feel rooted, at home, safe, and grounded... and I never felt it anywhere or in anything.

I’ve long forgiven my eight year old self for her decision to leave my granddaddy’s house and live with my mom. I honestly couldn’t have had a clue what would happen when I made that choice. So, I wonder who I’m needing to forgive in this moment. What part of me am I holding hostage? What part of me is submitting to fear? What part of me is biting her tongue and has spent years doing so?

My relationship with change has become one of disdain and acceptance, never wonder and hope. I don’t always enjoy it but I understand it’s a part of life, and rather than try to embrace it I reluctantly accept its foreboding and unsolicited presence. In this present moment of my life, where everything has the potential to change and the Promise to change for the better, I’m finding it difficult to trust that this process won’t be like the last time. Lord knows I’ve very well hit my limit and capacity to handle anymore shaking of my branches.

Unfamiliarity has become all too familiar a thing in my life, and I’d never say down to consider why until now. Truthfully, I didn’t even intend to get into this introspective space. It initially only began as a thought about not wanting to worry about not knowing what is going to happen or how or when but trusting the inner knowing that it will. The proverbial “it” is the promise. Well, the many promises — Promise[d] Land. Not knowing the details requires a capacity of trust I know is within me but is hard to tap, and this uncertainty all began with a change. A paradigm shift.

Like I said, it’s a well-fortified pattern in my life, and I’ve long resisted it. It’s a familiar friend that’s not really my friend if you catch my drift. Still, today, I find myself wondering if maybe I could befriend change and I actually can embrace it. If there’s one thing I do know it’s that the patterns in our lives, especially the uncomfortable ones, can sometimes show us things that could possibly become one of our greatest strengths, tools, and powers. That even these things don’t exempt us from living the lives we hope to live, but they can expand our vision for the lives we have become equipped to live.

So, what am I missing? I’ve long struggled against change and have warred against it in hopes that things could fit into what I desire to be my life and my normal without realising that I am far from normal. My perspectives, ways of thinking and reasoning, ideas, core values, and beliefs are not normal — they’re radically different. And because I’m different, my life will also be different.

Q: what is my normal? How does it differ from my actual life? Why does this normal appeal to me?

What have I missed here? What has the pattern of unfamiliarity and transition taught me and shown me about myself? What and where is the grace in that part of my history? What is God opening my eyes to about this today? And why today?

There’s a truth about the transition that I haven’t quite put my finger on. I’m an adventurous spirit — an outside thinker, ambitious visioneer — so a life in transition always prepares me to be ready to go when the time comes. However, that’s not it. That’s not the mark I’m supposed to be seeing and aware of. I know it. 

I’ve been sitting with what could happen if I keep on accepting these things:

• I don’t have control over what happens

• While I don’t have control I have a hope and a promise

• I can let go of my false sense of control and lean into Divine Sovereignty

I can let go of my false sense of control and accept God’s Sovereignty. I have continually admitted my lack of knowledge on just about everything including navigating this space. I do remember the hope and the promise. Every day it’s a process to do these things, and I always do after spending some time praying and remembering God’s Word. Today though, I’m being led to my past experiences with this kind of change. When there’s a breaking going on and I’m being called out of where I am and into new territory.

This feeling is familiar even though the circumstance isn’t. It’s the feeling I get in transition — an eroding mix of excitement, expectation, eagerness, and trust with a dash of fear and a lack of clear answers. Expectant waiting that teeters between patience and angst because I’m being led by a knowing. This is the familiar feeling of all of the times God led me somewhere or to do something or into something that ultimately led me to Him.

And today, the overarching by theme of “change” is under the microscope in the lab of my Father, and He’s instructing me to dissect it.

I’ve learned that in past reckonings, my memories of the changes are only half there. That there are parts, bits, and pieces of the puzzle that are left out; leaving it incomplete. I’ve learned that there’s always something to look at again and look over again. There’s always something worth understanding deeper. So, what is it?

Q: how has change benefited me? What new perspectives can I develop about my experiences with change? What new things can I learn?

I consider asking some people I know about their experiences with not finding a place to fit in and how they became grounded. There’s wisdom in asking people who have similar experiences how they managed to turn the tide, flip the coin, and go the other direction. There’s hope in their answers to that question I asked at the beginning of this. There’s support in good counsel, Godliness in Heavenly wisdom.

I’ve often thought that change only ever taught me that I need to let go, but I’m realising that I’ve missed the mark with that thrilling. Employing a scarcity mindset into the most basic and influential parts of my life. Transition and change aren’t letting go; they’re an opportunity for gain.

Still, the desire to embrace change and to be firmly rooted burns in my bones. I believe both are a possibility. Both are my reality. Both are true. Both are okay.