Affinity for Change
If you haven’t noticed yet (and most of you, by the time you begin reading my blog, will not have noticed), I like change. In fact, I’m a change-loving night owl, which can tend to drive my early-bird status-quo husband a little crazy at times. I enjoy moving furniture around…late at night. And with small children, when else are you going to do it?
My living room has been rearranged…oh, probably 8 times in the last 4 years. That’s about twice a year on the average. Moving to new places, although I’ve only had to move about six times in my life, is a new adventure for me. Every move, however, has been one I’ve looked forward to, almost without reservation, almost without looking back on what was or where I came from. When we moved here to the High Desert after high school, to this remote rural community, way out in the boonies, my brother hated it. It was so different from the big-city life we had lived in all our lives. I loved it. It was new. It was different. It was exciting.
I can think of a few exceptions to this change affinity I have, like when our childhood home, a home we moved away from, was renovated in a pea-green stucco, with security fencing and bars on the windows, or the time I went from a very small junior high school to a relatively large high school, or when I moved from teaching at Gardenhill Elementary, where I knew everybody, to New River, where I knew nobody. So…I guess you could say, I don’t always like change. But I guess always is almost never true.
In general, though, I love it.
I love changing how things look, like clothing and hairstyles or wall art or the paint color of a room or blog templates. I look forward to meeting new people and forming new friendships or starting new personal journeys, making new goals. I look forward to taking trips to foreign countries, starting new jobs, or doing ministry in new churches.
Perhaps it's my love for change that also drives me to get rid of clutter, to replace the old with the new or with nothing but empty space. I am not a saver. I love the trash can. I have one in almost every room. I continuously change my environment by removing the superfluous, the outdated. Change is refreshing to me. It fills me with a sense of newness, a sense of hope, a leaning toward a renewed outlook and better things.
Though it is often challenging and painful, change is something I long for in my walk with the Lord. I see other believers further along in their walk, and it makes me want to change. It makes me want to be more like my Creator, my Savior, to empty myself, making more room for Him. As difficult as it often is to go through, I pray for it, seek for it, strive for it. And I know I am completely powerless to effect it without the Word as my daily sustenance, without the power of the Holy Spirit transforming and guiding me moment by moment.
Without Him, I would never change.
Change me, Lord; don’t let me stay the same.
My living room has been rearranged…oh, probably 8 times in the last 4 years. That’s about twice a year on the average. Moving to new places, although I’ve only had to move about six times in my life, is a new adventure for me. Every move, however, has been one I’ve looked forward to, almost without reservation, almost without looking back on what was or where I came from. When we moved here to the High Desert after high school, to this remote rural community, way out in the boonies, my brother hated it. It was so different from the big-city life we had lived in all our lives. I loved it. It was new. It was different. It was exciting.
I can think of a few exceptions to this change affinity I have, like when our childhood home, a home we moved away from, was renovated in a pea-green stucco, with security fencing and bars on the windows, or the time I went from a very small junior high school to a relatively large high school, or when I moved from teaching at Gardenhill Elementary, where I knew everybody, to New River, where I knew nobody. So…I guess you could say, I don’t always like change. But I guess always is almost never true.
In general, though, I love it.
I love changing how things look, like clothing and hairstyles or wall art or the paint color of a room or blog templates. I look forward to meeting new people and forming new friendships or starting new personal journeys, making new goals. I look forward to taking trips to foreign countries, starting new jobs, or doing ministry in new churches.
Perhaps it's my love for change that also drives me to get rid of clutter, to replace the old with the new or with nothing but empty space. I am not a saver. I love the trash can. I have one in almost every room. I continuously change my environment by removing the superfluous, the outdated. Change is refreshing to me. It fills me with a sense of newness, a sense of hope, a leaning toward a renewed outlook and better things.
Though it is often challenging and painful, change is something I long for in my walk with the Lord. I see other believers further along in their walk, and it makes me want to change. It makes me want to be more like my Creator, my Savior, to empty myself, making more room for Him. As difficult as it often is to go through, I pray for it, seek for it, strive for it. And I know I am completely powerless to effect it without the Word as my daily sustenance, without the power of the Holy Spirit transforming and guiding me moment by moment.
Without Him, I would never change.
Change me, Lord; don’t let me stay the same.
Comments