In Times of Change

One of the things in life that gives me the greatest joy is
to sit with my father and talk – especially since I left for university. I have
always thought of him as amazing – he is a man of many and varied interests,
with experiences in life that I could never imagine. What he has to say often
has an impact beyond what anyone thinks is possible.

I think that the time my father caught me most by surprise happened the weekend
my oldest sister, Christina, got married. Because of the wedding, he was so
busy that we had no chance to sit and talk until the day after the wedding –
the day before I went back up to school.

We were sitting around the main computer after church Sunday morning,
chit-chatting about the little things when it came up – the changes that we had
seen in the past few months and would be seeing before the end of the year. We
had already seen some, and would see more before the year ended. One of my
cousins had married in Greece
in July, I left for university in August, and Christina had just gotten married
the day before. My younger brother, Oliver, was leaving for Army boot camp in
less than two weeks and my younger sister, Juanita, would be doing the same –
just not until the end of December. Where there had been seven of us still at
home most of the time, it would be down to four by the end of the year.

It’s not that I was trying to be self-centered, but the conversation focused
mainly on my being away at university because it was the most recent change
with the most direct effect on everyone at home. After a series of leaps and
failures, I moved home for the three years before this, and there were those in
the family who had doubted I would survive at a school three hours away from
home by car. The last time, I had been twenty minutes away and failed
miserably, so what was there to stop me from doing the same a second time –
from further away?

Dad and I talked a little bit about that, and about the differences between
then and now. The first time, I left thinking I could take on the world and
win, and went home in defeat. God had not been a consideration at all, and I
paid for it. This time, I left feeling scared and unsure of my ability to make
it without the support network that I had built up at home, but trusting in God
to carry me because I was acting on His instructions.

What my father said to me that day made me want to cry then and still make me
want to cry now. He told me that he could feel my absence when I was gone, and
that when I was home, I brought in a dimension that was missing otherwise. He
also told me he could see the changes that had taken place in me while I was
gone. What he saw was a stronger daughter than the one he had left in the dorms
two months earlier, and he was proud of her.

The Bible says in Zephaniah 3:17
that “The LORD your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take
great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you
with singing.” *

I like to think that God feels the same way as my father does about me. Every
step I take in the direction He wants me to go, I imagine that He is bursting
with pride. Every time I get a little bit stronger in my faith, I believe He
and the angels are singing with rejoice. And every time I seem to turn around
and leave, He feels the lack of my presence and misses the dimension that I
bring in.

It’s a heady lesson, but difficult to remember. I pray we are able to in times
of change.