There are the changes in life that make our hearts feel like a firework soaring into the sky on the Forth of July, about to burst into flame. Tangibly, they look like acceptance letters, job promotions, marriage proposals, or even simply being asked out over text by that person you can’t get off your mind. These changes are the simple, sometimes long-awaited moments that send our lives into new and wonderful directions.

But then, there are those other changes.

The ones anxiety plagues us over. The ones we pray will never happen. Yet the ones that at some point in life, each of us are dealt. For some reason these changes all seem to fall under at least one of these categories: adversity, death, or loss.

They are the times we are judged unfairly, don’t make the team, or find ourselves sitting alone in the cafeteria at lunch in our twenties (or thirties, or forties). They are the times a loved one is lost unexpectedly, or a dream dies abruptly. And they are the times when a friendship or community forgets us. They are the changes that look like lay-offs, cancer diagnoses, divorce, car crashes, and recently, like floods and hurricanes.

They are the changes we don’t want. 

They’re the ones we don’t plan for, and often, couldn’t have prepared for. They are the ones that make our hearts ache. And they are the ones that take our breath away. Yet strangely, in my life, I am finding that they are also the ones that do some of the most important work in our hearts. They are what sift and strip away all that we think matters, to reveal to us what truly does.

A few years into my last job, I found myself in one of the loneliest, darkest times in my life. I had been passed over for the position I wanted and changes had been made in our department that made my job harder. And as I had moved to a new state for this job—and had put my full focus into it—I still hadn’t built much of a community around me. I felt utterly alone.

So began a three year journey of figuring out how to lead and work in a challenging environment, dealing with unexpected health issues, and facing the increasingly undeniable fact that my life—and I—had to change. It was painful and it was lonely. Yet God kept putting the very people I needed in my path at the very times I needed them. He provided mentors who imparted needed wisdom. And He used this time to show me the unrealistic expectations I put on myself that were holding me back from the ones I was created to meet.

This was a time of adversity I would not have chosen, and yet it turned out to be the very road in which God lead me to living a freer and fuller life. Where I had thought my life would be better with the position I wanted—and maybe, a boyfriend—God saw through my life to its foundation. He saw its cracks, instability, and where I was content on being what other people wanted—rather than what I was meant to be. Then He used this incredibly hard time in my life to tear down what wasn’t working, and rebuild me/my life, in a way that was much more whole.

The changes we don’t want in life, do happen. Adversity, death, and loss find us. And though I don’t believe God sends them our way, I do believe that through them, He is able to bring even greater things into our lives than we can imagine. Anyone can make the best out of a good change, but only God can bring good out of the changes we prayed would never happen.

What are the changes you prayed would never happen?

How may God be wanting to bring good to you through them?

 

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