To Change or Not To Change

There was a moment when it hit me.  Deep down, I knew it would never be the same again.  Although things looked identical, my relationship with them had somehow changed.  My friends were still there, yet my connection to them differed in ways I could not explain.  I was an 18-year-old young man and home for the first time after leaving high school, and I was confronted with the reality that I had changed. And this scared me.

On the one hand, this community has brought me comfort and security; now, it no longer gives me the same feelings.  On the other hand, the thought of me changing made me feel like I was in the wrong.  I believed that to change was indicative of a bad character flaw.  So, I was left conflicted.  I was 18 years old and stuck between trying to be the person I was years prior while at the same time growing into the person I was becoming.

What about the prospect of change that causes us to react with such intensity?

Living in a new country, change is part of my daily life twenty years later.  It is a reality that you grow so accustomed to that you don’t recognize the change around you anymore.  You act upon it.  That is, until thoughts of moving back or on to a new destination creep into your mind.  For most Expats, this is when change becomes visible again and can spark intense feelings from within.

During our first visit to the States this past summer, a family friend told us that her time abroad with her husband had changed her forever.  And that’s it.  Deep down, all of us over here know that this is true.  Deep within our subconsciousness, we know we are changing in ways we can’t predict.  And it is within these changes that we know that our relationships with those from where we come from will also inevitably change.  This is what causes the fear.  This is what causes the anxiety.  And for me, the only thing that calms the storm is the fact that within the journey of my faith, change is not only unavoidable; change is necessary.

The difference between myself at 18 and me today is that “changing” within the communities I find myself in and how people react to that change doesn’t matter much to me anymore.  The big deal for me today is to be attentive to my soul’s journey.  As for this journey, if it is the security that I am looking for or a place that I go to pump up my ego, I will not find them here.

To be on the soul’s journey is to be utterly converted and changed.  Therefore, it is not about remaining as you are today and becoming a “nice” person.  It is to become transformed entirely from within.  It is a change of heart.  And this kind of change is not safe.  As a character in C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe once said, referring to the god figure of Narnia, “Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe.  But he’s good.”

A Jesus who agrees with everyone and everything, a Jesus without his holy anger, without the hardness of truth and genuine love is not the real Jesus as he is depicted in the Scriptures, but a pitiable caricature.  A concept of “Gospel” that fails to convey the reality of God’s anger has nothing to do with the Gospel of the Bible. True forgiveness is something quite different from weak indulgence. Forgiveness is demanding and requires an act of the will involving both the mind and heart of each party.

– Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI  

This is why any change makes sense to me only through the eyes of faith. This faith is predicated on the notion that we must suffer through death to receive new life.

Therefore, places change.  Relationships change.  People change.  I am changing.  Thank God.

“Changing”  from this context seems more about seeing what is already true.  It is the journey of seeing things more transparent and in a new light.  It is the transition from living in fantasy to reality.

And although these changes can feel like death at times, mainly due to our unhealthy attachments to things, the result is always life.  It is always good.

It is always Love.