I have a friend who doesn’t do change well. I have another who aches for it. Strangely enough, they both find themselves routinely responding in the same ways.
Both are fiercely loyal, probably to a fault. They will cling to relationships, to institutions, even to ideas long past what most people would consider healthy or normal.
Both are very deliberate in the ways they go about making decisions – to the point that life sometimes barges in and makes the decision for them.
Both have dreams that seem to escape them while they wait for the circumstances to improve… which they never seem to do.
Interestingly enough, both are people of great faith. These are not casual Christians. They are heart-deep in a pursuit of God’s best for their lives.
They also have their differences. One pushes himself to grow, to stretch, to improve – only to find out the ladder he was climbing was leaning against a bombed out building. The other refuses to consider that if she keeps doing the same things, she’s likely to get the same results.
One will analyze a situation to death without ever taking action, then analyze what happened when the action took him. The other will react to situations on the basis of emotions, but typically they’re feelings of fear or regret.
Meanwhile, the winds of change just keep on howling. To one it feels like a blowing rain. To the other it feels like a mocking tormentor.
Where Do You Find Your Security?
I once knew a man who had spent large chunks of his life on each of the American coasts. I asked him how people on the east coast compared to people on the west.
He thought for a minute and gave an interesting answer. “People on the east coast,” he said, “find their security in things that are familiar. People on the west coast find their security in change.”
I don’t know if he was right, but if he was, then the story of the east coast is, “The more things change…” and the story of the west is, “…the more they stay the same.”
It may also explain why we live with a lot of insecurity.
Living in the Shadows
Change has a way of turning the lights out on us if we’re not careful. I’ll never forget the feeling I had a dozen years ago that life had somehow passed me by and that I was living in the shadows of someone else’s greatness.
Or worse, of my own past.
Either way, I felt woefully inadequate to deal with the professional and personal challenges I faced. I felt called to lead in a world where all the rules had changed, and the “parade” was going in a completely different direction. I was answering questions nobody was asking any more, and the message was clear: you will never change your world without first changing yourself.
The problem is, change doesn’t allow us to assume master or guru status for very long. Schools may give terminal degrees (and I’m grateful), but life doesn’t. Today’s schooled is tomorrow’s fooled if you don’t keep growing.
The Raging Storm
Growing up on my own version of the coast – as in Gulf Coast – I learned some things about change myself. If you had cruised down through Gulf Shores or Orange Beach, Alabama in the mid-eighties, you would have noticed that the old array of beach houses on stilts had been replaced by row after row of gleaming condominium complexes and really nice hotels.
Progress? Maybe. But only after Hurricane Frederick leveled the beach and somebody asked, “Okay, what do we want to build now?”
One day’s calamity became the next day’s opportunity.
To change it’s all the same. And just as Jesus said that the rain falls on the just and the unjust, I have witnessed first-hand that storms destroy nursing homes and churches as well as bars and brothels and family vacation spots.
Change is no respecter of persons. It disrespects everybody the same.
What I’m saying is that it isn’t about you.
Okay, so somebody paved paradise and put up a parking lot. It’s nothing personal.
So you lost your job. What do you want to build now?
So somebody betrayed your trust. What do you want to build now?
So your kid left home and went to school or got married. What do you want to build now?
If your only answer to that is to build some kind of shrine to your past or to try to duplicate what you had before, I have some very bad news. You aren’t going to like the results.
Tracing the Rainbow
Like a ruthless storm, change has a way of exposing your foundations. That can be painful, but it can also be a joyful reminder of the things you have that matter most…
…the warm embrace of an authentic friend…
…the steady comfort of strong arms and a soft shoulder…
…the peaceful security of a heart you can trust…
…points of connection and community that remind you that, despite your longing and insecurities, you still belong…
…the often-surprising, always-relentless love that will stop at nothing to bear you up.
Whether the change is a harsh intrusion or a glacier-slow illusion, you can build on a foundation like that.
You can build on a hope like yours.
You can build on a heart like His.