What If We Could Embrace Change?

Dan hung floating shelves, and I collected photos, ordered prints, and spray-painted old frames. Our family photo wall with his/her kids and grandkids is well underway.

 

Before I met Dan—back when a roller coaster ride stopped in front of me and I boarded the car labeled “Later-In-Life Dating”—I knew that if I ever married again, there’d be a chance the man’s kids wouldn’t like the idea of their dad remarrying. Because that would change things.

And change can be unsettling.

Stepping into change is stepping into risk. What if my non-profit doesn’t get off the ground? What if I catch a debilitating disease while volunteering in a Third World country? What if my business plan, my scholarship application, my book proposal gets rejected? What if I don’t make the cut?

As humans, we’ll be called upon to embrace change. Here’s how to do it well:

Don’t settle for comfortable. Change means newness and the uncertainty that comes with it. We tend to like the comfortableness of how we’ve always done things. It’s called the ‘status quo.’ We like the status quo.

Let go of fear. Life is much safer staying at a mediocre job, not furthering your education, setting aside your passion for singing, for writing—safer and easier and less scary.

Take the risk. If we’re not willing to take the risk of stepping into change, we’ll probably never get the grant funding, the date with the girl, or the “America’s Got Talent” gig. Apply. Ask. Audition.

Open your heart. Without embracing change, cool things don’t happen—cool things that expand our reach of love, like, fostering or adopting children, providing respite care for hospice patients, making a difference in the lives of the homeless.

So much possibility and peril in life, and yet the scariest thing is not embracing change, not signing up, not opening our hearts.

This quote from an author unknown:

Great things never came from your comfort zone.

Turns out, Dan’s kids and grandkids, and mine—we all like each other.

And more change is coming to our family. A grandson’s wedding is scheduled for next summer, which means another granddaughter.

And we’re secretly hoping one of the couples—not saying which one—will have another baby (but shhhh).

Which means, more photos will be added to these walls.

But most importantly, more people to love will be added to our hearts.

The risk of embracing change is so worth it.