Moving causes you to experience a lot of things that you probably wouldn’t otherwise.
As I have alluded to in my last post, I recently moved from the one home that I have had for over 23 years (the entire span of my life) to a new town about 4 1/2 hours away. I knew that moving would bring about a great deal of change in my life, I just didn’t realize how much I guess.
First of all, I should say that over all, my experience with moving has been a good one. (Please don’t view this post as a complaint, there is a point to it.) I am staying with my Grandmother while I find a place to hang my hat, and that has been good. She’s a sweet lady, like grandma’s are supposed to be. I am working for one of my brothers and so I have a great boss and a good job. Thanksgiving just passed and so I saw a myriad of family members that made me feel even more at home and at peace with my move (thanks Dad and Judy). I guess you could say that I have had the best possible experience with a move to a new town.
The thing that has me perplexed though is how much a simple change in geographic location can cause so many questions, emotions, and internal groanings and at the same time elicit excitement, happines, and new levels of confidence.
Yes, moving is some sort of strange dichotomy of human experience. I find myself shifting, almost instantly at times, from one end of the emotional spectrum to the next, from clarity to mental fogginess, from finding adventure to just feeling lost.
I have visited a number of churches trying to find a place where I can feel like a part of the community and in the process have had, honestly, good experiences. I am fighting my cynical nature and trying to find balance somewhere between critiquing every church I go to and not settling to just go where ever seems convenient, or I like the music the best, or the pastor is the funniest, or whatever is supposed to be appealing about a church in the first place.
I went to a Methodist church for the first time today. It was nice, the Pastor reminded me of a minister that I am a big fan of (it’s crazy isn’t it? I’m a ‘fan’ of a minister…). He looked a bit like him and from hearing what he had to say, I almost get the feeling that the Pastor of this Methodist church is also a fan of this other minister. Oh, and he was very friendly, we chatted for a bit after the service and he was genuinely engaged in our conversation.
He was engaged in our conversation.
Engaged.
That’s the key really.
The one thing that seems clear in the midst of this spinning, whirling, accelerating, non-stop-ride that is my move is that if this is ever going to stop being the challenge that it is, I have to be engaged in what I am doing. That is to say that I have to take a very deliberate role in my life right now.
I think that if we stay put for too long that we stop attempting life and just let life happen to us. Just think, when life doesn’t have any driving force of change it becomes the same thing, over and over again. No new relationships, no new job, no new challenge can very easily make for no personal growth. I am convinced that if we desire to grow as people, that is, if we want to grow emotionally, mentally, physically, spiritually, relationally, professionally, then we have to decide, as Ghandi said, to “be the change that [we] want see in the world.”
I told my friend and co-worker, Daniel, that 2007 went entirely too fast. Then in one of my philosophical babblings I said something to the affect of “Well, I guess the year didn’t pass too fast, the earth is taking just as long as it always does to get around the sun. There was just too much that happened this year, life happened too fast.” (I should note that Daniel didn’t respond to this, I think he is still trying to figure me out, I probably just seem like another crazy American-he’s from Berlin-which is not really a bad thing I guess.) Yes, this year life happened at an accelerated rate for me, I made decisions that made it thus and there were MANY outside factors that made life happen way too fast for me this year. This is a by-product of change: acceleration. You could call decisions catalysts of change; they speed up the reaction.
So, in my duplicitous reasoning that is the result of my numerous responses to all of these changes I am experiencing, I encourage you to do the following: become engaged in your life and make the hard decisions that face you, the decisions that will cause you to change. This can bring you a great deal of growth. Keep this in mind though, your choices will make life speed up, so don’t forget to stop and embrace the changes that come to you.
The pattern of life:
Choose.
Change.
Contemplate.
Grow.
Repeat.
