Dear you,

You who finds yourself

Grasping for a foothold on the slippery slope of time,

Gulping for oxygen on a fast-moving train you don’t remember boarding,

Losing against gravity on the tough mountain climb,

Groping helplessly through the fog of everything in your life blurred together in order to put your finger on that one specific thing that is all you can think of,

Slumping farther yet again as another pack of expectations and responsibilities is added to your once-young shoulders,

Trying to get somewhere with unclear directions,

You. You who are experiencing change?

Breathe. It’s tough, but God is enough.

No matter how cliche it sounds.

We can’t always explain the ache of change, loss, moving on, or moving out.

Sometimes we try to ignore the nagging fears of vulnerability and the ever-moving, never-stopping hands of that daunting, impatient clock.

Perhaps to a time, you have wished to put your hands to the hands of that clock and coach them along, hurry them up.

But now you may be wishing to put your hands to it yet again, only this time to turn them back, slow them down, or just take the battery out and make that thing stop altogether for awhile.

I’m guilty of that, but the truth I have to face is this: I can stop my clock, stop the ticking, the moving, and fool myself into thinking that time is taking a break, but it’s no use.

There’s still a million other clocks still ticking, still making their rounds, and time has never ever stopped, even though I’m pretending it has.

We’ve all seen change of some kind. Some have seen it written on a piece of paper, like a diploma, a letter, an acceptance form, a job opportunity, or somewhere in a book. Others have heard it through a phone call, a conversation, a message, a song. Still others have seen it walking down the aisle, or boarding a plane, or moving house.

You know how you’ve seen it, I know how I’ve seen it, and we’ve all discovered this inevitable fact:
Change changes us.

This is why we can find ourselves somewhat lost and nameless in the world, at times. We look around and wonder, where did the identity thief come from, and where has he gone?

How have we got here?

What are we to do next?

What if we’re feeling unqualified?

Breathe. It’s tough, but God is enough.

No matter how cliche it sounds.

Change hits us in strange and sometimes unexpected ways. Ways that can tear a big, gaping, aching hole through us and will we ever feel right and whole again?

In a sense, change forces us to change. And sometimes, stubborn me doesn’t want to change, at least not in the way I’m required to. Sometimes, I just want things the way they’ve always been.

So we can’t change change, and we can’t change the fact that change changes us…

But listen. We can change the way change changes us. As one who can sometimes look at change a little too negatively and fearfully, I must remind myself: I cannot control the circumstances, but I can control how I respond to them.

Am I the only one who, when I stop and reflect on the past, can wonder if I’m even the same person at all?
No matter how unwanted it can be sometimes, there is positives to these times of stretching and learning and growing, and they are just that. Stretching, learning and growing.

If you’re wishing for a redo on life, stop and reflect on what all took place. There may be lots of things we want to relive, redo. But that’s not the end of it.

Think back to the places you’ve been, the experience you gained, the relationships you’ve built, and the lessons you’ve learned. Would you really want to undo all that? The question stands for you to answer yourself.

And I’m giving you credit here. You’ve put a lot of grit and elbow grease and energy and time and investment into your life. And I’m talking no matter how many mistakes you’ve made.

Maybe to say I want to go back, I’m saying I want to tear down what has just been built.

What if instead, we focused on continuing to build on the foundation that has already been laid? With the experiences coming our way right now.
Dear you. Your life matters. And all we’re given is the here and the now. So maybe we should just see how much goodness and blessing and wonderfulness we can squeeze out of this moment. Know what I’m saying?

Sincerely,

Me.