I don't like change...

Happy Friday to you all!  This weekend I am looking forward to celebrating my friend C-Rob's entry into Club 40!!!  She is such an awesome person and I hope she has the best birthday ever!!! 

I remember when I turned 40.  For the two years leading up to 40, I was so looking forward to it, planned a HUGE celebration and was looking forward to the next chapter of my life.  Until the week of my actual 40th birthday came.  That week found me super down, doubting myself and the many life choices I had made up to that point, and just dreading my birthday.  I felt like I wanted to go to sleep on the eve of my birthday and not wake up until the day after.  I had planned all this stuff and I didn't want to see anybody.  I just wanted to curl up in my bed and watch television.  That's when it first hit me - I don't like change.

I have never been fond of change, yet I've had to endure constant change during my life.  I had to change houses when we had a fire at our house when I was 8 and move to my grandparents house.  I had to adjust to wearing glasses in the 4th grade when rarely anyone else did.  I had to change schools in 6th grade to go to a new school, with new people, in a new neighborhood and take a bus.  My whole world changed when I went off to college.  My world changed again when I graduated from college and came back home to attend law school.  My world changed yet again when I got engaged, got married, bought a house and had a baby.  You get the idea.  Change happens. And yet, I'm almost never prepared for it and fight it every step of the way.

What is change?  Change is defined on dictionary.com as "to make the form, nature, content, future course, etc., of (something) different from what it is or from what it would be if left alone: to change one's name; to change one's opinion."  See the full definition here.  So I suppose it would look something like this in picture form:

Now, I'm not a moron. I understand that everything changes and everything has to change.  It just takes me a while to adapt to it and I don't like it.  I also don't like reprogramming my kids for whatever new change lies ahead.  It simply makes me tired...

Let's take moving as an example.  In my life, I've moved 16 times (this includes moving each year for college).  In the past 6 years, I've moved 2 times and am gearing up for another move now.  That's a lot of packing and unpacking.  It's also an adjustment to a new neighborhood, a new house and leaves me feeling unsettled.  I think that's the part that I dislike the most. 

There's also changes like watching your kids grow up.  That is the hardest pill to swallow.  When they are babies and small children, you just love them to pieces and pour everything into them.  Then you have to watch them grow up and change into tweens (and that is more than a notion if you have a daughter), then into teens and then prepare yourself for them leaving you and going off to college.  That's where I am now; the Teen is entering his junior year, so the time for him leaving the nest is close at hand.  And I don't like it one bit!  As much as I want him to grow  up and experience life and everything that comes with it, part of me still longs for the little boy who was my pride and joy, my baby.  In short order, I will go through the same thing with the Tween and I can't even begin to process THAT yet! 

But, when the time comes, I will adapt.  That's one of the two things that happens when change comes; you either adapt or you wither and die (not literally, but figuratively).  I just ran across a quote that I think befitting:  "The bamboo that bends is stronger than the oak that resists."  ~ Japanese Proverb  I'm striving to be more like the bamboo than the oak.  One of my favorite songs is Everything Must Change by Oleta Adams.  Others have sang it, but her version is my favorite.  She has a beautiful voice; you can listen to it here. 

So as I gear up to enter yet another new season in my life and the inevitable change it brings, I hope to embrace it rather than resist it.  At the end, I want it to look something like this:

 

I hope you will pray for me and wish me luck.  My mantra for this time of change is the serenity prayer; maybe it will help you as you go through your own seasons of change.

Am I the only one facing change?  Holla @ Darvi! Be Blessed and have a great weekend!!!