change

Change is hard. You don’t need me to tell you this. You know it so well, have experienced it so many times that you have become accustomed to its unsuspecting but all-encompassing grip on your very foundation. Yet it still rocks you, still catches you off-guard and knocks the wind out of you every time.

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens. ~Ecclesiastes 3:1

Everything has its season, and sometimes we try too hard to hold onto the seasons that are in the past; the seasons have changed and yet we try to remain the same.

We are not the same. We are different, transformed, and new- every day. This is the resurrected life that Jesus has called us to. There is no going back to who you used to be. You have been changed and your life is different now than it once was. And that is such a good thing.

I find myself constantly either living in the past or living in the future. I have a hard time staying in the present, engaging with where I am right now. Maybe that’s because I am such a dreamer, but it is so incredibly damaging to my well being. I’m scared to move forward so I stay stuck in the past, but the past only drags me down and haunts my very bones. I am not who I was, and the things that happened to me or that I chose in the past do not define who I am or what choices I get to make today. Change is inevitable and it is crucial, because change is growth. Change means we are growing and learning and things are not the same; can no longer remain the same. It’s hard because it requires dying of self, which is always painful and never easy. It requires letting go of old ways of being and taking on the new form Christ has for us.

For me it looks like letting go of being a victim. It looks like using the resources that God has giving me to produce fruit, abiding in Him so my branches don’t die off and produce nothing. Through God, I can experience victory because He has already triumphed. I no longer need to feel sorry for myself or just let life happen to me as a passive bystander. No, God is calling me to change: to be someone who stands up for herself and others; who, coming from place where she knows she is loved, is able to go out and love others. God is my defense and my refuge- I don’t need to defend myself or live in the past anymore. I am changed, and so are you.

It is never too late to change and if you don’t make the first move, God will. Change is scary, yes, but without change there is no growth, and without growth there is no life.

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. ~John 10:10