To Change or Not To Change

There was a moment when it hit me.  Deep down I knew that it was never going to be the same again.  Although things looked identical, my relationship to them had somehow changed.  My friends were still there and yet my connection to them was different in ways that 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 one hand this community had brought me comfort and security, and now it no longer gave 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 who I was years prior while at the same time growing into the person I was becoming.

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

We either attempt to keep things as they are out of the fear of not knowing who we will become, or we provoke change for the sake of change out of pride.  In other words, we do everything we can to “change” only in an attempt to make us feel superior to others who we perceive don’t ever change.  Either way, the prospect of change can cause turmoil within ourselves and in our relationships with others.

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

During our first visit to the States over this past summer a friend of the family 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.  For deep within our subconsciousness we know that we are changing in ways that 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 really matter all that much to me anymore.  The big deal for me today is to be attentive to the journey of my soul.  And as for this journey, if it is 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 journey of the soul is to be utterly converted, changed.  Therefore, it is not about remaining as you are today and just becoming a “nice” person.  It is to become completely transformed from within.  It is a change of the 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 that it is only through the eyes of faith that any kind of change makes sense to me.  For this is a faith that is predicated on the notion that we must suffer through a death of sorts to receive new life.

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

For “changing”  from this context seems to be more about the process of coming to see what is already true.  It is the journey of seeing things clearer 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, especially due to our unhealthy attachments to things, the end result is always life.  It is always good.

It is always Love.