I met this girl once. She was severely depressed and had been for about 7 years. She’d lived in this story for so long that she couldn’t drum up energy or “want to” to do anything anymore – laundry, dishes, straightening the house, cleaning out clutter, even getting out of bed some days.
A variety of meds hadn’t helped. Changing her routine hadn’t helped. Counselors hadn’t helped. Getting a job hadn’t helped. She was flat-out STUCK!
When God crossed her path with mine, He whispered to me that grace COULD help! She and I chatted several times about how grace changes everything, and while she loved the hope I talked about, she was very skeptical. I understood why! She had tried so. many. things. And none had helped.
God prompted me to offer to help her dig out of the blech, and I was excited about giving her further hope and showing her how grace could change everything in her life. But, she said no.
I’ve often pondered why she refused. Maybe it was because she wasn’t truly desperate enough. Maybe it was because she was afraid of trying one more thing that might not work. Maybe it was because some other story kept her from accepting help. Or maybe, deep down, she was afraid of change.
Change Seems Scary
For most of us, change is scary. New homes, new jobs, new churches, new relationships – they’re all tinged with a certain amount of fear and uncertainty. We get used to our lives, and we’re comfortable here. That may sound crazy if you have a life you don’t love or things that annoy and frustrate you. But the truth is, we crave familiar and cling to what we know and what we’re used to.
So while most change seems scary, if we’re honest, the change that scares us most is change WITHIN us.
Why IS that?
I’ve come to believe inside change scares us the most because we fear that if we had to change, then something must’ve been wrong with us before. We were somehow messed up or broken or needed fixing, so we HAD to change. And that just doesn’t feel good. Who wants to believe they’re screwed up, much less have to carry around the guilt or the labels?
Changing the Change Story
But what if all that guilt and being broken and “change is scary” is just another false story?
What if the truth is that we are NOT broken, wrong, or needing to be fixed?
(God tells us, as believers, that we’re not.)
What if change is simply a way to move toward MORE of something good?
What if the changes we make aren’t telling us something about our identity
so much as they’re helping us get what we want?
And what if we could reframe the old story into something
that serves us instead of scares us?
I think with a little story revision in our heads, we can turn change into a lovely thing in our lives. Something we WANT to have around. Something we begin to enjoy. Something we see as growth and healing and happiness. Something that lets us pursue more of what we want. Something that brings us MORE life!
That’s a story we’d be happier to live most any day, I bet.
