Change is as inevitable as breathing.  As humans, often we don’t like it, we don’t want it, and we don’t accept it.

We resist change because we’re settled into things the way they are.  To people, the way they are.  We know what to expect, and what not to expect.

Still, change comes.

There are life-altering accidents.  Life-changing medical issues.  The loss of a job.  The change in circumstance—financial, emotional or spiritual.  We learn something that alters our perspective and what we saw as acceptable now isn’t.

These life-defining moments, like change itself, are inescapable.  The good news is we all experience them.  Some are more painful than others, but these changes eventually impact us and those closest to us in some form.

Some changes are potent and powerful, and we feel disoriented, or out-of-step in our world, and we wonder if we will find our way back to some semblance of peace and content.  Some are minor but throw us off-course for a time.  The bottom line is we long for the way things were.  What we knew.  What was in our comfort zone.

It might not have been great, true, but it wasn’t riddled with all this uncertainty and doubt we feel now.

Most grieve, resisting the change.  That’s normal.  But it’s important not to get stuck there.  To shift focus from what was to what is.  Why?  Because change has occurred.  It is the present.  And only when you assess the present can you begin to adapt and chart your future.  Acceptance is key, and it opens to the door to new possibilities.

Have you ever lost a job and reevaluated your career and decided you wanted something different?  Or that you’ve always wanted to do something but never have had the chance?  If so, could it be that this is the new door opening for you?  That chance to do something you’ve wanted to do for a long time?

Change can bring opportunities.  But you must think about them not as inconveniences, but as opportunities for these special second chances.

If you look ahead to your future and not to your past behind you, eventually you realize that the change you thought was awful was your second chance.

Will you continue to rail against it?  Convince yourself that this change ruined your life?  Or will  you accept the change, embrace it, and seize its opportunities?

It really is your choice.

It’s not always easy, or quick, or without challenges.  But when you are on the other side of it and you look back, you will deem it worth your effort.

In the Bible, this very thing was addressed:

“Neither do people pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved.”  Matthew 9:17

What started this line of thought for me?

Reading the Bible, I discovered how often people’s names were changed.  God and Jesus did this a lot.  Saul was saved and became Paul, for example.

I started searching and saw this happened time and again, and I spotted the pattern:  A person experienced a life-altering event, embraced it, and was made new—changed.

Whether the name change, the identity of the person, was done as a physical reminder of the change or for another reason, only God/Jesus knows.  But I find it plausible that the individual benefits from an in-your-face declaration that you are not who you were.  You are who you have become.

There’s a lesson for us all in that, in my humble opinion.

Blessings,

Vicki Hinze