Change.

Our life, for me can be simplified down to one word: change. That tiny word can hold so much though. I had a few significant things happen this week beyond the new job and apartment hunting. I am really enjoy my new job and have loved the excitement and anticipation of looking for our own place, but something deeper and more meaningful broke through in the ordinary nature of this week.

Change is hidden inside a simple word with complex meaning: challenge. When you slip the middle out of that word you have the word change. In the midst of all our planned and unplanned changes I was reminded this week of the hope that resides in the word challenge. Challenge silently conveys contest, struggle, conquering, and the feeling that come with those. To conquer something is a high in my life that is unmatched by much else. Through a friend sending me an old acquaintance's blog that held an excerpt from her book coming out and another unexpected change for us I was brought to a new place. I saw the challenges and changes very clearly in our life but I missed one little, yet full of impact, word hidden in the midst...hope. I forgot that in challenge you get to experience the sweet fear that is anticipation of conquering a hard task. The butterflies that are the size of eagles in you but that give way to a rush that comes when you have achieved it. I forgot how much I loved watching fear turn to adrenaline to complete joy and feeling of utter ecstatsy.

"Learning to Swim" by Shauna Niequist captures my feeling of this lastest season, and it combined with new challenges catapulted me to a new place. I've placed Shauna's words below and added her link so you can read more of her work. For me in this moment her words in a book yet published inspired me, loved me, reminded me of God, spoke of friends who get you beyond years with very little
contact, and became a sigh in what looks to be a season that is steadily changing.

This communicates my heart, prayers and hopes.

Learning to Swim by Shauna Niequist

I learned about waves when I was little, swimming in Lake Michigan, in navy blue water under a clear sky, and the most important thing I learned was this: if you try to stand and face the wave, it will smash you to bits, but if you trust the water, and let it carry you, there’s nothing sweeter. And a couple decades later, that’s what I’m learning to be true about life, too. If you dig in and fight the change you’re facing, it will indeed smash you to bits. It will hold you under, drag you across the rough sand, scare and confuse you.

This last season in my life has been characterized, more than anything else, by change. Hard, swirling, one-after-another changes, so many that I can’t quite regain my footing before the next one comes, very much like being tumbled by waves.

During that season, there were moments when I lost touch with the heart of God’s story, the part where life always comes from death. I love the life part, and I always try to skip over that pesky death part. You can’t do that, as much as I’ve tried.

I believe that God is making all things new. I believe that Christ overcame death and that that pattern is apparent all through life and history: life from death, water from a stone, redemption from failure, connection from alienation. I believe that suffering is a part of the narrative, and that nothing really good gets built when everything’s easy. I believe that loss and emptiness and confusion often give way to new fullness and wisdom. But in that difficult season, I failed to believe in the big, beautiful story of who God is and what He is doing in this world.

If I’m honest, I prayed the way you order breakfast from a short order cook: this is what I want. Period. This is what I want. Aren’t you getting this? I didn’t pray for God’s will to be done in my life, or, at any rate, I didn’t mean it. I prayed to be rescued, not redeemed. I prayed for it to get easier, not that I would be shaped in significant ways. I prayed for the waiting to be over, instead of trying to learn something about patience or anything else for that matter.

What I know now, though, is that change is one of God’s greatest gifts, and most useful tools. I’ve learned that change can push us, pull us, rebuke and remake us. It can show us who we’ve become, in the worst ways, and also in the best ways. I’ve learned that in many cases, change is not a function not life’s cruelty but instead a function of God’s graciousness.

If you dig in and fight the changes, they will smash you to bits. They’ll hold you under, drag you across the rough sand, scare and confuse you. But if you can find it within yourself, in the wildest of seasons, just for a moment, to trust in the goodness of God, who made it all and holds it all together, you’ll find yourself drawn along to a whole new place, and there’s truly nothing sweeter. Unclench your fists, unlock your
knees and also the door to your heart, take a deep breath, and let God do his work in you.

http://web.me.com/sniequist/shaunaniequist.com/blog/Entries/2010/3/2_learning_to_swim.html