Changes in the Mirror

Without going into detail, I took a hiatus from writing for a while. This whole endeavor is a learning experience for me, and a wonderful part of my Journey……I hope no one feels I cheated them or anything, but I needed time to reflect and redirect my life. I love you all, and I will be writing more and more as my time and experience allows….

Changes in the Mirror

When we moved to South Carolina from Indiana, ten years ago, I think besides myself, the one in my family who had the most difficult time adjusting was my oldest daughter. She had just finished 4^th grade in Indiana and was starting 5^th grade here. She had many friends but two close friends in Indiana, and the three were inseparable, often sleeping over at one girl’s home on weekends together as a trio, always together during recess and gym activities, always on the same teams for games, many secrets shared…..you get the picture. When we moved here, she had to learn all over again how to make new friends. A year passed and she was still very homesick, so that and other reasons forced us to plan a visit back to Indiana. She had made a few new friends, but it wasn’t the same for her, because she still held onto the yearning for her old friends- she couldn’t completely let them go, yet.

A surprising thing happened when we returned to Indiana. We went to visit all her old stomping grounds, hoping to help her see that it was okay to be happy in South Carolina, and her friends are okay being happy here. But what she learned was sad and wonderful all at the same time. She learned that her friends in Indiana had made new friends as well, and had begun to build new lives that no longer involved her. She was so saddened by her friends’ inability to save much time for her while she was in town, she cried for over a day, but with our enormous family size, she had a lot of people to support her, even though not many knew what happened. Something totally amazing happened then. My daughter learned without a doubt, that she was no longer connected to Indiana the same way she had been connected. She was free to completely submerge herself into her new life in South Carolina. 

She had thought that she needed to hold onto those friendships left in another state, and that didn’t leave her enough room to make new friends and a new life elsewhere.  Her new life caused her to grow in another direction as her old friends. The really sweet thing here is that now she has reconnected with her old friends, and she’s kept her new friends, and she keeps making new friends still. Her web of people has grown by leaps and bounds all because she learned that it’s okay to let go; it doesn’t always mean forever, even if sometimes it seems like forever. She is such a strong person, partly because of this one lesson. 

Isn’t it wonderful that we have a Teacher who uses life stories, like hers, to teach us the meaning of things we face in life? God used this lesson in my daughter’s life to teach me how a life of following Christ’s teachings can be. Before we believe we have a life in darkness. It’s a shallow, nowhere leading life, but it’s our life. We cling to this life like a preserver in the water when we’re drowning. We cherish it. When we are saved, we get excited. We want to share this with everyone involved in our former life, so they too can be excited with us. We want the people we love, in our old life, to experience this life changing feeling, so we share and we share and we share. The problem is; many in our old life don’t give two hoots what we feel. They have been swallowed in their own darkness and want us coming back to them; they don’t want to come out of the darkness to us. Over time we lose interest in the same things we once shared with these people. We learn new things and new ways while meeting new people who share this with us. Slowly but surely we drift away from our old life, while stepping into our new. The new ways we’re learning become our ways; the new people we meet become our people and the new things we learn become our things. In some cases the changes are seen immediately, and I think that is a wonderful gift God gave to those people; a new life. In my case, and in the case of many others, the changes in our life happen slowly over days, weeks or even years. The changes are seen, but they are seen in God’s timing. People don’t often reflect on this, so they feel like they aren’t really changing at all, because it wasn’t an instant change like they see in another person.

When we compare our walk with God to another person's walk, we’re cheating ourselves of the beauty of the journey. We stop looking at our greatness to only see our failures. And we cheat God, because we don’t allow Him to work in our lives in His time; we try to force it, so we can keep up with whomever we’re comparing ourselves. This will divide our heart, and division in our own heart is NOT from God! God’s will is for us to follow him with an undivided heart, and evil uses our own insecurities against us, so that our heart will always remain divided. Sneaky sneaky. Look at God if you want to see yourself. Looking at another person will only show you a shadow of who you are. 

Remember: Talk to God often. He loves your voice and will listen to you 24 hours a day if you need. And please….Go Be Physical TODAY! Tomorrow may be too late.

Peace….