“Life has a way of stepping on its own toes,” one of my professors said in college and I had no idea how right he was. “Life has a way of getting in the way of life.” This has proven true the longer I’ve lived.
Change is Inevitable, Perspective is Everything
I consider myself a change junkie. I am the kind of guy that will move around the furniture in office, the appliances in our kitchen or the loveseat in our family room just because I like change. It energizes me.
But even if you are like me and like change, we usually like it on our own terms.
Unexpected change brings challenge and the question is, what will we do with that challenge. We either (1) buckle down and enjoy the ride or (2) freak out and hide.
Change can come in the form of a baby, a car accident, a rejected proposal, a marriage, a hard conversation with our boss or a consequence of a bad decision. No matter how it comes, the question is, who will you become on the other side of that change?
Listen to me clearly – it is not will you make it through the change? but what will you become as a result of the change?
All the little red X’s
I believe that if you could map out the events of our life on a timeline from birth to death, it would like like a line full of little red x’s. Each x represents an event—good or bad—where you were given the opportunity to learn something or be formed by God through circumstance.
Also believe that God is continually discipling us. He is using every opportunity to teach us more about Him and make us more like Him.
Sometimes we are in tune with the idea of learning from Him through those little red x’s on life’s timeline. Other times we just hunker down to get through, seemingly unchanged by the events or circumstances that have taken place.
In other words, all too often we just get through life’s storms (or celebrations) without the thought – what was God trying to teach me there? And we just celebrate that we got to the other side alive.
Get through it or learn through it?
When we go through a season of change, we have two options:
- Survive. Make it through with the least amount of affect or change caused to my life, my kids life and Molly’s life.
- Seek. See this as an opportunity to learn from God and ask Him to make the most out of these circumstances to change my, my kids and my wife.
Every storm of life is an opportunity for transformation not just stagnation. If I remain unscathed by the trials of life, I will scarcely receive what it is that God could and is willing to teach me.
