i saw this at rachelarnold and thought of you, my friends, so i had to share…
…Everybody has to change, or they expire. Everybody has to leave, everybody has to leave their home and come back so they can love it again for all new reasons.
I want to keep my soul fertile for the changes, so things keep getting born in me, so things keep dying when it is time for things to die. I want to keep walking away from the person I was a moment ago, because a mind was made to figure things out, not to read the same page recurrently.
-Through Painted Deserts, by Donald Miller
so many of my friends and family are going through this process or have recently. i’m going through this myself. there’s a saying… i say it so often that i think i might as well adopt it as my new mantra: change as a constant ensures survival. we don’t get to choose the change that God affects in our lives. so often we have no say whatsoever. many times the change that comes feels like a curse wrapped in a blessing or – if we’re very lucky – the opposite.
looking at my own life and the lives of those i love i can say without reservation that this, right now, is a season of change. not the loud, bright, feverish change of the election year and of campaign slogans… a quieter, harder, more frightening and intimate change. this is a season of personal change and yet, the chant is the same – “yes, we can.”
…and you know what? we really can. we can make it through this.
there’s a very old story that i cling to in these times. i’ve shared it with my friends and family over and over and so i’m sorry if you have to hear it again.
once a very important man named jairus came to Jesus and begged him to come heal his daughter who was very sick and Jesus went with him. on the way to jairus’s house, Jesus drew a crowd as He usually did. the crowd pressed in on Jesus and jairus and it slowed them down. in that crowd was a woman who had been very sick for a long time. she pushed through the crowd and managed to touch Jesus’s robe because she knew that, if she could only touch him, she’d be healed…
if you grew up in church, you remember this story. she was healed, not because Jesus did it consciously, but because she had absolute faith that Christ could heal her. that’s an amazing lesson, but not the one that i carry with me. the best part of the story comes right after that…
while Jesus was talking to this lady about her healing, one of jairus’s household came to him and told him to leave Jesus alone because, due to the delay with the crowd and the miracle that Jesus was working (and the subsequent conversation), it was too late… jairus’s daughter was already dead. Jesus heard this and turned and looked at jairus and just said, “don’t be afraid. only believe.” and then he went and worked a miracle in jairus’s life.
did you get that? Jesus looks at jairus – who had just been told that he had lost his daughter – looks him in his tear-filled eyes and says, “hey. I’ve got this. don’t fear. all you have to do is believe in Me.” in the french translation it says essentially, “do nothing except believe.” and then Jesus went to the daughter that everyone thought was dead and brings her out walking and talking.
how often do i feel like jairus? God’s working amazing miracles around me… He’s changing lives at what seems like a breakneck pace. but so often i feel like he’s skipping me – like he’s putting off working in my life so that he can do awesome things in someone else’s life. how often have i looked at God with despair and sorrow filling my eyes?
how often have i felt like i’ve run out of time for miracles?
and every time God has shown me amazing things. every time God has worked miracles in my life. and every time i feel like He’s looking at me with compassion-filled and slightly sad eyes and He says to me, “why are you worried again? didn’t I tell you not to? didn’t I tell you that all you have to do is believe in Me? haven’t I always taken care of you?”
and every time i am ashamed because He always has…
there is so much change in my life and in the lives of the people i love right now. i don’t know how it’s all gonna work out. i don’t know what it’s gonna look like on the other side…
but i have to believe that God’s got this… and so i try to keep in mind that change ensures survival and that to not change is to die…
and i try to remember not to fear. God’s got it. He’s working miracles for me too…
