Changing, nothing more than changing.

“How would your life be different if…You stopped making negative judgmental assumptions about people you encounter? Let today be the day…You look for the good in everyone you meet and respect their journey.”
― Steve Maraboli, Life, the Truth, and Being Free

     Change is hard.  We all have our own normal and it's difficult for other people when we change, but when we change on the inside, it's most difficult for ourselves.  Lately I have been questioning whether I have truly changed.  Then God so graciously allowed me the chance to see that I have.  I was recently faced with a situation that for most of my life, I would have come out verbally swinging, but instead I actually did more thinking than speaking.  In fact I barely said anything at all.  I wasn't sure of the right thing to say, but I definitely knew what not to say (and didn't say it.)

     We all like to know what to expect.  When we are riding in a car and believe the driver is going to take a left, but suddenly they take a right and our balance is thrown off, it just feels weird for a while afterwards.  When somebody makes a major physical change, like cutting off long hair to wear it short or when somebody starts wearing glasses, every time we look at them, we have to pause for a second and confirm we know who we are talking to.  When someone changes behavior (good or bad) we become frustrated because we can't anticipate how we will interact.  But I have found it also frustrating, knowing what not to do and being unfamiliar with the right thing to do.  We want everyone to accept our normal and our normal for them.

     Nick Vujicic has no limbs.  We stare because this does not fit our normal.  If we suddenly lost our limbs there would be a period of adjustment, that Nick never went through.  He never had arms and legs so his normal is different than ours.  Nick knew that God had the power to give him legs and he wanted them badly enough and believed strongly enough that he bought a pair of shoes and kept them in his closet for the big day.  The change did come, but it was not legs on the out side, it was spiritual growth on the inside.  He realized that God made him without limbs for a reason.  

     Years ago my hair was very long and one day when I went in to get it cut, I decided to cut it all off.  I told my friend to hurry up and cut before I changed my mind and she started whacking.  There was a time as I sat there and looked in the mirror as long hair fell to the ground when I realized there was no going back now.  I couldn't leave it how it was with long pieces and short. The middle of change is ugly.  It's uncomfortable and sometimes we don't even want to be seen during that time.  I had to go all the way.  I went through a period not long ago when I felt like I didn't belong anywhere.  I wasn't comfortable sitting in a bar, but I was even less comfortable sitting with believers who were living what they believed.  I had to ride it out and accept that God would keep cutting and I would become more comfortable.  It's a challenge especially when the enemy is whispering in your ear.  

     We all want to be the same, accepted and loved.  I believe we are accepted and loved by God more than we will ever know on this earth.  The change is in the realization that He loves us  and as we grow we realize how big that love is.  The enemy has been attacking me for days now and at times, I thought I couldn't stand another second, but I look at the truth.  If he is attacking, I must be upsetting his plan.  I have been trying to focus on Jesus and not the enemy. I've been trying to stay in peace and remember Who is in control and be thankful it's not me.  This morning I woke up with a dark dread and doomed feeling.  I prayed.  God showed up.  The best part of changing is that all you have to do is climb in the chair, hold up the mirror, endure the pain while God chops away the junk.   He knows what needs to go all you have to do is be willing.  Then when it's all done, your hairs gone and you think your looking pretty good, God reaches over to touch your face and you close your eyes anticipating a moment of tenderness, then you feel the hot wax slap across your eyebrows... you realize you will be in the chair the rest of your earthly life.  This is when you find out your true willingness.  Do you expose that hairy back or get up out of the chair?

“[To have Faith in Christ] means, of course, trying to do all that He says. There would be no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice. Thus if you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing these things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity