"Don't ever change" and why it's bad advice

Remember when you were in middle school and high school and everyone would write "You're soooo (insert positive adjective here)! Don't ever change!"? And you had your little ego boost because you were reading all about what people like about you and you vowed to never change because, look! You had so many people who loved you exactly how you were!

Well, yeah. That's true. But imagine if you stayed a fourteen-year-old forever. Perpetually stuck in 8th or 9th grade emotionally, mentally, and physically. What if you never grew up? What if you never learned new things? What if you never tried and succeeded? Or tried and failed and learned from the failure? Can you even imagine being stuck in puberty for the rest of your life? Sounds like a nightmare.

But seriously. Changing from the awkward-middle-schooler to the figuring-life-out college student (hello my life) to the real-adult (not quite there yet) is what makes life so interesting.

Here's the deal: we need change. It's unavoidable. It's good. It's, hopefully, growth. Do not fear the change.

But I wish I could say that I followed my own advice. I hate change. I don't adapt well. I'm comfortably stuck in my ways and it would take a force of nature to avert me away from them. And I typically don't react well when such an event blows through and scrambles my life up. Events like moving. Or college. Or when God decides that he's had enough of my shenanigans and shakes things up to wake me up. You know, all of those things. But the most effective change I've ever seen has been at the hand of Christ.

When we fully let Christ take control of our lives, He makes all things new (Revelation 21:5). Making something new would require a change. My least favorite thing. But I have seen myself changed and refined more in the past year than I have in my whole life. In my bubble that I grew up in, there wasn't a lot of wiggle room.

College. A&M. Good, Godly friends. Wiggle room. Room to grow. To change. To learn. To fall and to get back up. And to run. Flat out after Christ. And it was scary as heck. But I'm embracing it now. And I'm not afraid. Will it hurt? Probably. But you know what? I'm going for it. Because I can either cower in fear of the divine change or I can fall into His sweet and protecting arms to pull me through. Growing up is hard, but I don't have to do it alone.

"For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but a spirit of power, of love and self-discipline." 2 Timothy 1:7

(post inspired by Myles Osborne)