Change is one of those things that generally makes me uneasy. It's also something I crave. After high school I started to condition myself to accept change every four years. First there was college in Orange County, then life in the Bay Area and now back down south to San Diego. Each move occurred exactly four years after the previous location. Consistent change.
November 2013 marked my four-year anniversary in America's Finest City. As luck misfortune would have it, it was around this time that two of my closest friends moved away. Then, the first week of December brought about a huge change, a poor choice that led to some unfortunate consequences. Suddenly my four-year itch began to creep up on me, I felt restless and lonely. Add all this to the fact that my 30th birthday was fast-approaching. I felt unprepared, overwhelmed, upset that 2014 was already shaping up to be a bad year.
If given a choice between dwelling on the negative under the comfort of my covers or going outdoors to resist my Debbie-Downer thoughts, well...truthfully, I'll typically choose the former (and did). It's a regrettable part about my introverted personality, and one that has been strengthened through years of practice.
And then I turned 30, that magical number that many single women fear. It's the same one that has been said to transform us into better women; wiser friends, family members and girlfriends; and more self-assured of who we are. Of course I haven't mastered all those traits in the few weeks since my birthday, but something has been on my mind a lot lately that comes from growing up: grace learned from change.
Grace for others and grace for myself when life throws us curve balls. Change is inevitable, so instead of avoiding it or running to it to leave behind a messy life, it seems much easier to welcome the benefits we get from it. How much smarter are we because of the mistakes we've made in the past? How much more accepting of other's faults because we know our own, the ones we've overcome and the ones we still need to work on. We're all just looking to make it work from day-to-day and some days are easier than others. But luckily some days are more amazing than others.
I'm thankful that I am not that 16-year-old girl trying to figure out how to get the popular girls to like her; that I'm no longer the 22-year-old who is so completely in love with her boyfriend that she forgets how to love who she is in the process; or that 27-year-old who was afraid to accept responsibility for her mistakes and wrong-doings that may have hurt others.
It occurred to me that grace gives me the freedom to acknowledge the good with the bad and be grateful for both. It's my hope that others would also view me in the same light. Grace allows me to be OK with not being where I want to be at the moment—whether it be with friendships, financially or in my desire to become a daughter that my Heavenly Father can be proud of. Life is moving and I am daily developing. And that, that's a consistent change that I will happily cling to.
