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Yesterday, after work, I stood in the parking lot for a long time and stared at the sky. It was a beautiful late afternoon and the sun had sunk much lower in the sky than what I'm used to seeing—a sign that September is really here.
It’s somewhat difficult for me to wrap my mind around the fact that we are already in the 9th month of 2011. The year of 2009 dragged on for what seemed like eternity. 2010 picked up a bit, but this year? My word, I swear it just started, and already I’m considering plans for Halloween, Christmas, and New Years.
In a way, I think that’s a good thing. Bad years seem to be the ones to drag on and on, but the fact that this one has nearly escaped me reassures me that it has been a dang good year. I’ve been on some incredible adventures and grown in ways I never imagined possible.
I thought about these things as I stood in my work parking lot. I stared at the green fading from the leaves and I thought about change. Sometimes we long for change and other times we dread it, but it doesn’t matter much either way because change is going to come. I thought about how, while I long for the change of scenery, I don’t long for deployment day. But really, one can’t come without the other. Because if time is to move forward to take me somewhere else, it’s going to move forward to take Someone Else away from me. Such is the nature of things, I suppose. And it’s all a little exciting and a little bit painful, all at the same time.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, when I was driving to work this morning, I was listening to "How Great is Your Love" by MercyMe—a song that played the soundtrack to the summer of 2004; a summer where I fell deeply in love with God. That summer started off a little rough, being that a boy I had severe puppy love for did not feel the same. I spent the following month listening to sad love songs and feeling sorry for myself. So when the time came for our church to go on a World Changers mission trip to Wyoming, all I wanted to do was spend those 9 days back at home, sulking in my misery. I knew God wanted me to go, though, and that nudge couldn’t be resisted. And I went and that song was on my headphones on the 2-day drive there and they played it on worship nights and in the van on the way to our job site and on the compilation video they made at the end of the week. I wept to that song on our last night in Casper, knowing that those strangers I had met only days before—those who had turned into friends and then into family—would be scattered across the country, far out of reach from where I was.
It’s funny how music can take us back to places like that and as I passed through stoplight after stoplight this morning, I remembered those moments vividly and I longed for them. I think mostly because God’s presence was so real to me in that season—a presence that was wild and real and full of love.
And I almost had to laugh at myself as I pulled in the parking lot and wondered how it is possible to fear and long for the future while also missing the past?
But then it came over me--this warm, rich feeling of knowledge. That the leaves will change and so will the seasons and the people around me and the things my heart beats for and the ways in which I'll thirst for life. I would like not to think that those things are fluid concepts, but the reality is that they are. Relationships and time flow in and out and the truly amazing thing about change is the possibility it gives you. Without change, our lives would be stagnant and we could not love deeper today than we did yesterday and we would not have the option to be who we are today and then someone completely different tomorrow.
Change creates the opportunity to grasp every beautiful moment of this short life.
So I started the song over and spent a few more minutes in the car praying and thinking about these things. And I knew He was there and it was as if He whispered in my ear that while my life may feel great distances away from the summer of 2004 and even from September of last year…the God who I felt in that song and that summer is still the Same.
I dream of having that old loving feeling of being 16 and in love with my God, but the truth is that the God I was worshipping 7 years ago is the same God that has held my hand and stayed true through all of this, even in my wandering times. And He was here last year when I was crying over boot camp and when I was loving life in Maryland and when I was celebrating New Years with 3 of my favorite people. And He’s here now and He will be here during deployment departures and during those hard-to-get-through-days. He will be there when the leaves say good-bye to the trees and when the rains come and when the sun seems so far away.
He has been there.
He will be there.
And knowing that…feels so good. It brings immense peace in a whirlwind of change.
And whether or not I hope for change or dread it, I can know that the Most Important Thing in my life is more than steady—it is eternal.
And that is more than I could ever ask for.
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