Change is inevitable; growth is optional.
I'm not sure who said that, but I agree with them whole heartedly.
The word inevitable means incapable of being avoided or evaded.
I find it rather ironic that I embraced this phrase a few weeks ago as my own and now it seems I am being called to put it into practice.
I have never done well with change being thrust upon me.
I do like to change things up a little bit, I hate doing the same exact thing over and over. In working out, you're suppossed to change up your routine regularly so your body doesn't get used to the same moves. I like to help other people go through change (haha that amuses me greatly), I like trying new things and challenging myself in different areas.
However, there certain elements of change I have to work hard at not curling into a little ball in the corner to cry.
I think it's Ghandi who says be the change you want to see in the world. No clue really what that means, and I don't really want to...
Of course you should be the one attempting to change your surroundings for the better, but it's nearly impossible for people to change eachother, situations and circumstances just by making a statement like that. Situations change reguardless of people doing anything... and in writing that I feel like I walked off the deep end somewhere. Maybe more on that later? Who knows.
I just found this other quote by Henry David Thereau: "Things do not change: we change."
I'm going to take the liberty to say that "things" are surroundings, situations, houses, cars, etc. You know tangible things. I mean those things "change" but they shouldn't be what is changing us. Change happens from within.
I was talking to someone the other day about how we, personally, can't change people. Only God can, in His own timing. That's the kicker. In His own timing. I am convinced that God is all about His own timing; in fact, I am more than convinced.
These are different levels of change that have been in my head as of the past week or so. The most recent though, questions parts of me that I have walked through, buried, walked through, buried, walked through, buried...you get the idea.
The hardest, most difficult level of change for me has to do with the people I love. I know I'm not alone in this either, so if at anytime during this blog it seems that I am like "woe is me, my world is caving in" blah blah...it's not what I mean.
So yes, the people I love. Change happening such as moving, getting married, best friends getting significant others. Moving is the big one.
In the summer of 2007 I think I had the most transitional time I have had yet. My family decided they were moving to New York, the guy I thought I was going to marry, in my little 18-year-old just graduated heart, changed his mind; in the fall that year I lived with my Aunt and Uncle while my family moved to New York, in the winter of that year I joined them and moved back 5 months later. Major transition. It was so difficult, but I saw God bless each phase of that time so much because I was constantly getting before him, crying, yelling, journaling, singing, ranting, pouting...and sleeping -- just to push through.
That wasn't the first time, I have been adapting to transition for my entire life, it was just the one that is the most prevalent in my mind because I'm sensing such similar emotions right now. P.s. By the way, I'm not moving and neither is my family.
So this change is inevitable.
Bound to happen.
How else would we change and grow.
I believe that change goes hand in hand with seasons. Not the actual seasons, although sometimes I feel like my heart and my spirit are parallel with what the weather is doing (wooohoo Cleveland). But seasons of time where we are apart of specific things and the change starts to happen when we are either released from it, or the focus isn't so, lol, focused on that area, or we are being called to step into a higher wrealm of it.
There is time for everything.
So the question is, what season are we in, what is God calling us into (if we are transitioning into a new seaon)?
I am so very grateful that God is so incredibly faithful. This is one of the reasons why I love Him so very much. He teaches me so much about how much He loves me. I love how prepares my heart for the change that will be taking place around the corner. Because He goes before me, gaurds my heart and promises to give me hope for my future. He is so good.
I say all of the things with tears often running down my face, taking deep breaths and allowing little pockets of sunshine penetrate my heavy heart - all acting as a reminder that I can trust my Daddy, in heaven, for the change that He will bring.
As much as I think people use this verse way to much, and I know the song gets stuck in your head because it gets stuck in mine; this verse is very applicable. I want to end with this.
"There is a time for everything and a season for every activity under heaven:
a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain,
a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and time to throw away,
a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate
a time for war and a time for peace.
He has made everything beautiful in it's time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men, yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.
I know that everything God does will endure forever; nothing can be added to it and nothing taken from it. God does it so that men will revere him.
Whatever is has already been, and what will be has been before; and God will call the past to account."
Ecclesiastes 3: 1-8,11,14-15
