Change is coming and there is nothing I can do to stop it. My soul cries out “I’m not ready!” But it pays no mind and regards my desperate plea as irrelevant. This is happening.
Tonight as I sit in my bed, it is the very last night I will share this room with my dear roommate. Try as I may have in the past, I know better now than to dwell on the hope that things will ever be the same. They won’t. It’s the beauty of this life and just they very way God is creative. Things do not happen the same way twice. It is a mature and wise thing to grasp. I had to realize this in the past with Guatemala: It will never again be the same as being in that small house with nineteen people that summer of 2013. Even if I were to mirror the same circumstances and set it up with the same parameters as it held before, it still would not be the same. Time has a way of changing, both people and places. Time moves on and we are malleable humans who grow and change and callous or soften. Dynamics change with the dimensions of time.
This is why moments in time are so precious, why each day we should choose to be present. Why we should never wish to be somewhere we are not. Dream we may, but I want to choose to be where I am at in each moment. Because this exact moment won’t happen again. This same dynamic is not repeatable and not refundable, either.
Saying goodbye and closing out a season, however good or however hard, is never easy for me. Hopelessness beckons at the door as my grieving heart walks away from something that will never be again. But instead of hopelessness, I choose gratitude. Gratitude that allows me to grieve the ending of a season, but also to grab hold of hope and press into what is in store next. Gratitude holds me in the limbo that exists between seasons, as I let go and look forward. Too often I have been hung up on looking back and letting go. So caught up in the past that I forget there is a future to look ahead to. And not even just any future- a good future, full of promise. Full of life, and life to the full. For greater things and greater depths, whatever that may look like. I look back, and I see in hind sight more clearly and more fully all the working of the Lord. His masterpiece, my sanctification and the ways He mysteriously works all things for my good and His glory. I look back and rejoice, for the work of the Lord is good. My heart knows this full well. I look back and the only response I can really give is gratitude. I am in awe.
This last season was one full of rest. Full of learning. Being stretched in places I didn’t know were possible. Rest, it turns out, is a hard lesson for a girl raised on hard work and a fast-paced job. Rest is a beautiful art. It broke me down and taught me who I really am, and what my worth is as a daughter. Rest taught me who I am not. I was pruned. Places that were fruitful in my life were cut and left to rest. They will now be even more fruitful as I learn to grow in the ways the Lord has taught me. Now rooted in a greater understanding of my worth, His glory has all the more room to move in my life.
This last season I gleaned a lot. I was challenged. Greater depths I hungered for, and greater depths I was shown.
Now, now is the time for me to step into these greater depths, and to myself grow into this space that the Lord is calling me to. It is time to re-grow, to be more fruitful, and to work now from my worth and not for my worth.
The time is now. The change is now.
Perhaps I am ready. I have been made ready by the Lord, and the time is now.
What all this season has in store, I know not fully. But I know that the Lord is calling me out, and I am saying Yes to what He is calling me to.
So with a grieved heart, I say goodbye to this season and all the joys it held. But full of hope, I step into a new season, trusting that what lies ahead is beautiful and good and full of purpose.
Photo credit: Brook Gelinas
