June 24, 2018 - The Change

I’m going through The Change. I’m hot, I’m flustered, I’m shifting from one emotion to the next without the advanced noticed as required by version 24 of McCollum Household Policy and Procedure. There are moments when a cold sweat would ensue, but that has abated itself, and instead I’m just aware of a “mental hot” when I think of its presence. I knew it was coming. You can only sit so long with both feet against the door frame holding it back, though believe me that mentally I’ve been trying, but somehow it has a way of finding you.  And there isn’t a single thing you can do. So here I sit. Hot, flustered, emotional. Navigating The Change.

But before you get all wide eyed, wondering why Sally is sitting here talking about THAT change, (but remember, I am the one who plastered your screen with lopsided Boob 1 and Boob 2.2 for the case of advocacy, maybe menopause deserves its own point of advocacy, so stay tuned a few years down the road) that’s not what I am referring to.  

We spend our whole lives, some of us, trying to keep everything exactly as is, because that is where we find our comfort, our “teddy bear and blankie” if I may. Though there are a few of you, who I completely don’t understand, who go around looking for it (The Change) in some constant rally of adventure and pursuit of ongoing unexplainable delight, but trust me, I’m not you. I’m me. And I avoid this ridiculous uprooting of all you know to be familiar, cozy, and warm at all cost. But somehow, despite a desperate attempt at avoidance, change has been sneaking up on me with its long decrepit hand inching its way across my peripheral vision until SPLAT….it has wrapped itself around my thick ankle and taken hold. 

“Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.” - Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein

See, Mary said so, you change adventure chasers, you! What is wrong with you?! I certainly don’t mind a little shift in scenery here and there. I have been known to walk in my house and move a picture from this wall to that wall to switch things up a little bit on occasion. I’ve even switched out my mantel décor just this weekend to spoof things up a bit. But I am also the same person who in graduate residency had coworkers who velcroed everything to her desk simply so things would always be found exactly where they need to be. The joke was on them. I loved it!  I’m not afraid to say I like things just so. It keeps my mind high functioning and results in high output, mostly to your favor. So when I find myself in an unanticipated, particularly if not so delightful, Big Ole Bucket of the Change (BOBOC)….Well, it sets my world in a tilt-a-world, per se. 

It first started with us uprooting our house (ok it started with Mastectomy, and there is a whole blog covering that so I won’t bring it here) unexpectedly because God sometime does “the crazy” from human perspective and changes your plans. Well, home is home.  And it’s one place that for me sets orbit back to orbit when things go haywire. There is a reason it is called “home” after all. I didn’t understand leaving it, I simply understood I was supposed to leave it. And not only leave it, but leave it with nowhere yet to go, and no assurance of a timeline for it to be replaced. Yet when God calls you from something, He in the process is also calling you to something. And He knew, while I was hot, flustered, and emotionally stirred, that he was calling me to Home.

“…you start to love this house not so much for all the ways it is perfect in that for all the ways it is not. You become familiar with all its nooks and crannies. How to avoid that the key gets stuck in the lock if it is cold outside. Which floorboards have some give when you step on them, and exactly how to open the doors for them not to creak. That's it, all the little secrets that make it your home."  - Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

Much like embracing a new home, such is embracing The Change. 

“Grief does not change you, Hazel. It reveals you.” – John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

Barely a year later came Andy’s death. And to say that was change would be the understatement of the century. I’ve been through few experiences in life previous, that have influenced me greater, revealed myself deeper, or made me long for the day before more earnestly than that moment. That singular experience has catapulted me into a long-term suspension in a lava lamp of change. It’s not all bad, it’s not all good. It’s simply all meshed together into all something. We are a conglomeration of all of our previous experiences and they all mold us into this beautiful blob of being, but I am a constant believer in knowing that those experiences aren’t meant for our being but for that of knowing and experiencing God in a richer and deeper way so that others might also. John Green had it partly right. Grief did change me, but hopefully it revealed not only me, but Him in me. I know this to be true, there were days where I didn’t know up from down, and it was only by Christ in me that I was able to orient myself in the not stop flow of the lava lamp.

Nothing ever really felt “still” following Andy’s death. The lava bubbles continued to bobble in slow motion, pinging themselves off the glass wall, traveling up and back down again over and over in the thick gooey liquid. So when my parents, quickly followed by my sister, both decided it was time to sale their houses and move, The Change swooshed right in again full speed with it’s hot flashes and palpitations of unease. No one seemed to understand that this was the very moment that we needed the familiarity of familiarity (well, that Sally needed the familiarity of familiarity) and that change was everything I was trying to avoid. I so desperately needed life to stay exactly as it was, minus the removal of my brother as I needed that to revert back to the day before. 

“Change is hardest at the beginning, messiest in the middle and best at the end.” - Robin S. Sharma, The Leader Who Had No Title: A Modern Fable on Real Success in Business and in Life

But a few weeks after the decision was made, and the pieces all started falling into place (as they always do), what was so hard at the beginning, began to morph into this incredible awareness that maybe change while it may not be what you think you need, may in fact be exactly what someone else may need. And because you love them, you start to see things through the eyes of those around you and it becomes exactly what you need as well. 

People always say The Change is a sign of life starting the downhill slope. It’s as if life has come full circle. Other say The Change is an incredible start of a new beginning. I’ve learned in this life that with every situation, The Change is entirely what you want it to be. And it is entirely up to you what you do with and through it. Often it feels like we are in the washing machine of life with life happening all around and to us out of our control, with us being tossed and turned in it’s constant bombardment (I’ve spoken of that before here. March 23,2017), and I most certainly have felt the rivets of that here of late the past 10 years, ok maybe 40 years. But then there are those moments in life where we choose The Change, instead of change happening to us. 

“For what it’s worth: it’s never too late or, in my case, too early to be whoever you want to be…I hope you have the courage to start all over again.” - Eric Roth, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button Screenplay

For the past almost 20 years I have focused my career in one area, and in a few short days I am walking away from that. To say that is inducing all the signs and symptoms of The Change, “hot flashes, flustered moments, and unusual shifts in emotions”, would be an understatement.  

"It's not hard to decide what you want your life to be about. What's hard, she said, is figuring out what you're willing to give up in order to do the things you really care about."  -Shauna Niequist, Bittersweet: Thoughts on Change, Grace, and Learning the Hard Way

But when you know something to be the right next steps, and when you know it’s time to choose balance, positive input, and emotional security, sometimes you do the crazy and you dive off the deep end. I’m taking what seemingly would be a career catapult downward from some’s perspective, and a career catapult upward from others, and yet a career net neutral from others. A career change can bring about perspectives. The Changes have shown me what my life is to be about, and sometimes you have to give up things in order to do life better. So therefore, from my perspective I’m saving it (my career) by giving it up which in some ways is saving myself and allowing me to do better what matters. 

So I’m starting over. The details of what I am doing don’t matter. It’s similar, yet different. Scary, yet exciting.  But I am leaving what I dearly love to do more of what I love. And I’m peaceful.

Maybe Andy leaving us so early got me thinking. Maybe circumstances bred new circumstances. Maybe seeing that there is life after loss, showed me that I can do anything. Maybe seeing that change is going to happen no matter how hard we fight it, showed me I can also proactively orchestrate change. I’m not a mountain mover. I’m not someone out there trying to change the world. I’m built for the small scale. But I am someone who desperately wants this life to be about something bigger than myself. I want to make your life more beautiful simply because you knew me, and therefore you get a glimpse of Him through me. 

"There is nothing more beautiful than someone who goes out of their way to make life beautiful for others."  - Mandy Hale, The Single Woman: Life, Love, and a Dash of Sass

I’m going through The Change. Maybe you are too. Or maybe you want to or need to. Life is too short and too dear to keep fighting our way through and in the gooey lava lamp. What do you need to change to make life more rich in the way He has planned for you? Where do you need to be open to change so that you can free yourself up more for the people around you? How do you need to embrace The Change already happening around you and to you so that You can see the God in a new light? 

It’s not what you do that matters, it’s how, why, and for whom you do it.  – Maybe it was me or Someone, somewhere

“Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”- God, Joshua 1:9

You can access previous posts HERE.