Change

To say that my son, Nick, didn’t like change as a toddler, would be a huge understatement. When he was three, his grandparents took the carpet off of their stairs to replace it. Knowing full well that Nick hated change, my father-in-law took great joy in showing him the uncarpeted stairs and watching him melt down. Nick has been forever scarred.

Nick is not alone and while most of us wouldn’t do what he did at three – melt down about uncarpeted stairs, we don’t necessarily embrace change.

This morning, I read an article by Simon Barnes, entitled “People Like Change.” As I read the title I thought to myself, “this man obviously doesn’t know me.” I have had very few jobs in my life, I refuse to shop at Wegman’s no matter how great everyone says it is, and I actually enjoy vacationing at the exact same place each year.

Simon Barnes states in this article that, “Being totally change resistant seems like a very uncommon characteristic amongst human beings. Most people want new things. Most people want the latest gadgets and the newest deals. People want to move forward and make progress and be up with the times. If this wasn't the case then surely we wouldn't have mobile phones and ipods and the Internet.” He goes on to say that, “If people seem change resistant it’s probably because they feel vulnerable and powerless.”

Okay, so I have Blackberrry and don’t know how I ever survived without a laptop or the GPS we bought just a few weeks ago. So maybe I do like change.

Perhaps the change you and I don’t like really is the change that makes us feel vulnerable or powerless – change that we don’t know the outcome of. So maybe it’s not change that you and I dislike, maybe, just maybe, it’s the fear of the unknown that ties our stomach in knots and keeps us up at night.

As Christians, we don’t need to fear change. We can embrace it because we have a Heavenly Father that sees the beginning to the end of our journey – a journey that will include many changes and transitions.

This summer, when we get the upstairs re-carpeted in our home, I won’t melt down and neither will Nick. But I probably will never shop at Wegman’s regularly, because I do feel vulnerable and powerless in that store.

As for the other changes in my life; perhaps they will still tie my stomach in knots for a short while but the fact of the matter is, “My life is like an open book to God, he watched me grow from conception to birth; and all the stages of my life are spread out before him. He prepared all the days of my life before I'd even lived one day.” (Psalm 139)

It’s my job to simply trust him.