Change on the horizon.

Have you ever been in a season of change? Finally, it feels like you are moving away from the holding tank. The waiting place and into the action. Moving forward. That dream, plan, idea unfolding. God is leading out of waiting and into forward motion. 

You are excited. Thrilled, really, to be moving out of the waiting. However, the forward steps bring a load of change. 

It’s like before the technology boom. When we carried a weight of textbooks. The excitement of starting a fresh new course on the college campus. Crisp notebooks and pages of unread text. The bubbling of the future ahead. Classes that were leading to the dream, the goal.

…And the weight. The weight of a half dozen textbooks in the backpack. The books weighing down with every step to the class, to the goal. 

Do you know it? Do you feel it? The weight of change that comes with forward steps. 

As I sit at my computer this afternoon. Soft Lauren Daigle playing in the background. Little girls resting at opposite ends of our home. I think, reflect on these last few months. We have been in a season of moving forward. Slowly moving forward. And yet my heart is heavy. Heavy at how different it all has been. The ups and downs. The difficult days and long nights. The pressing weight on our family, on our faith. How change has bought us to places we didn’t envision in our dream. How moving forward is not a walk on paved pathways. 

The changes are different from my expectations. I struggle with that terribly. I struggle believing that all things work together for good when I can’t see the good yet. I fight inner battles of incompetence, jealousy, and fear. I fight because the dreams of my heart are being filtered through eyes of this life. 

I see as a thirty-year-old, wife, mom of two, living in the rural county of a developed nation. I have American glasses on. Not God’s goggles. 

I see the things of this life with my own tinted glasses. Like the long sleepless nights over the last 11 months. My impatience with our exploring 3 year old. The large expenses that keep cutting into the savings. Less quality time to spend with my husband. Stressful jobs. Bug bites and infestations. 

Where is the American dream? Is it something worth striving for? 

Money, jobs, house, kids. Is that all there is to life? Something inside me wants those things. Wants to strive. However, looking outside of myself gives a different perspective. Recently I lost a loved one. She is gone. And her stuff is here. The things she made with her own hands are just things when she is not with them. Stuff. 

With God’s goggles on life is beyond the stuff. The dream is more than the American can imagine. Life is not for the striving, barely surviving. No, life is for thriving. For loving, caring, giving. My life is part of a greater dream. An eternal future. Not for a home of dust but for something far beyond that dream. 

The weight is momentary. The weight of change is temporary. And the goal. The ultimate dream of coming Home is forever. With God’s goggles, I see life clearly. I see the long nights, the little steps forward, the money and houses as fading. Gone. Stuff not the life itself. 

Souls go Home. Not stuff. Not the things I want to strive for. 

I want to thrive. I want to reach my end with a full heart, not a full house or bank account. What about you? Are you willing to put on God’s goggles? 

 

Romans 12:2 Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect. NLT

Colossians 3:2 Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. NIV