Do YOU like Change?

A good friend of mine wrote this wonderful article about change and I wanted to share it with you.  So often, we (me included) sit paralyzed with fear by what what change could bring.  Liz shared a new perspective, that I am adopting immediately.
Thank you Liz, for allowing me to share this...I found it refreshing and beautiful.

Change –

A few Sundays ago, Doug Smith asked our congregation about change. “Who likes change?” I was one of the crazy people who raised my hand. And since then, I’ve been wondering why. Here are my reasons for embracing change.

            Change is a great catalyst for growth and I would choose to grow rather to remain stagnant or die. I believe that, like many things in life, how we perceive change is a choice.If I choose to resist change I run the risk of regretting the past life that God has granted to me and resenting the future life God has planned for me. Change is inevitable. I do not want to create conflict in an arena where inevitability will always win. What is the point in creating needless strife; when life is already full of enough strive as it is?

            I am not accepting of change for change’s sake alone. So often, after one removes the shiny plastic coating from something “new and different” one finds nothing but the “same ol’, same ol’” underneath. Change - in and of itself - can either be positive, negative, or neutrally ineffective. A twenty dollar bill in the gutter can be spent wisely, poorly or left to deteriorate. Unlike change, twenty dollars can also be tucked away for the right time and place to be spent. But, mostly, change is not something I can control. I cannot slow it down or save it up for the moment I am ready for it. It occurs in God’s time frame and sometimes in the world’s time frame; but rarely in my own. Even when I think I have a five year plan or simply a plan for next Sunday, life has a way of changing it.

            Change does not always make me happy. Happy implies cheerfulness, high-spiritedness, or even naiveté, or giddiness. No, I am not always happy with change, but I choose to be accepting, and I am slowly learning to like it. I try to accept it with as little complaint as possible. I strive to live with it without causing undue conflict. I want to accept change and enjoy the contentment that resolution allows.  It is my choice not to find my life’s meaning in the winds of change. I do not find my self-worth in the changes life does or does not grant to me. I want to be content with whatever life changes I experience because I believe that life is greater than the sum of all its experiences.

“Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.” Romans 12:2 

It seems to me that if I am to be transformed, I must be willing to change.

"The key to change...Is to let go of fear"

Rosann Cash

Thanks again Liz...God Bless You!