The Beautiful Things

     It's a sort of eerie, heart sickening feel--you know the one where your heart literally aches? 


     That's the way change makes me feel.


     I feel like I've already written about this? It's kind of a big thing for me I guess. I just don't know how to wrap my brain around it. I don't want it, but I can't stop it. I need it. My life must move forward.


     I know that good comes of change. You grow as a person, learn lessons and experience new things. As Christians we're sanctified and made more like Christ with time. I can look back on my life and honestly say that all of the changes I've had to go through so far have only turned out for the good. But that doesn't mean that it isn't almost always painful and sad when you realize that change is coming or has come. 


     Sometimes it's hard not to look back on my past and long for my life to be what it once was. For friendships to be the way they were, to be able to re-feel things that I once felt, to go back to those places that I loved, for certain habits with friends to be the same again, for the presence of certain people or things that I've lost to come back, for the simplicity that I think I remember there being to once more exist. While there were many, many beautiful things in my past, I tend to romanticize it and forget about the terrible, disgusting things that I have left behind as well. Sometimes, I think, for new and better things to come we have to let go of the old things. 


     I need to remember that if I went back to the way things were, then it wouldn't be the way it is now--and the way it is now is amazing; although the past was beautiful, the present is so much better. If I still had all of the exact same friendships and habits and feelings, then I wouldn't have room in my heart and life for what I have now. I need to remember all of the sin and wickedness and hurt left in the past and recognize that my life is the way that God wants it to be. 


     And right now my heart is beginning to hurt like crazy because I know things are changing again . . . I really just need to embrace it, even if it does make me sad for a little bit, because every phase of my life seems to be more beautiful than the last, and that's something to be excited about. Change is something to marvel at, even if sometimes that marveling includes dread and fear at first.


"I noticed tonight that the world has been turning . . . though I know I said I wouldn't leave you behind, but I have to go, it breaks my heart to say that I can't stop now . . ."
Keane--Can't Stop Now