Change

There have been a lot of big changes in my life lately. A lot. I'm living in an apartment, I have a full-time job, I have separated from my publisher, and I don't see my kids everyday like I used to. So, yeah, change has happened. Change has arrived. But change is happening in me in more than a physical sense. I've known I've been in need of internal (mental and spiritual) change for quite some time and while I had slowly been working at it, the physical changes that have occurred in the last month have thrown my internal changes into fast forward. I've gotta tell you, this is a good thing. An amazing thing. I've been longing for this and finally, it has arrived.

I don't think there is a person in the world who fully enjoys change, I mean REAL change. Change creates discomfort from what's normal to you, from what's become comfortable, from what seems to be easy. Right? Change has a way of evoking fear and in that fear, often times, we tend to lash out at others in an effort to resolve our personal discomfort. I see it in the church environment all the time.

In the last week alone I have made several amazing realizations about myself that are literally changing everything for me. Most of those realizations are not new to me, other people have told me the truth of them, yet I simply didn't "get it". They were head knowledge not partnered with heart knowledge.

For example, with my mental health struggles (depression/anxiety/PTSD), I have often times found myself in a "fit" over an incident that has upset me. Let's use disappointment, someone has made a promise to me and has gone back on it. In the moments following me meeting my hurt, I find myself feeling deeply insecure. I look at my life at large and become insecure about all of it. Am I going to get in trouble at work? Do they even like me or think I'm good at my job? Are the people in my life all just putting up with me and not really invested in me? I haven't heard from my best friend in 12 hours, is she mad at me? Oh, my kids should have a better mom, I'm such a failure in that area. In short, the disappointment I feel in one tiny area of my life becomes fear of everything in my life becoming a disappointment. And I react. I try to fix it. I try to make it stop before it's too late. In my attempt to fix things (that aren't broken, btw) I end up looking a little - nuts. I recognize this but I'm unable to stop the craziness. The nut has rolled far enough down the hill that its momentum is too much for a person of my strength to pause. This has been a pattern all my life. I feel insecure over everything, and in those moments it is REAL and TRUE and not a damned person can convince me otherwise. My therapists, my close friends have tried to tell me that I'm wrong. It's not real. It's just a feeling. I believe them in my head, but the heart just hasn't bought it.

I'm sitting here chuckling. Why? Because yesterday I finally received the heart knowledge to work on this problem in my life. I got frustrated with something - like, feeling like I needed to jump out of my skin frustrated and in an instant, everything in my life became colored with that frustration. I had plans last night to spend time with a new friend and I was really excited for it. It was supposed to be the highlight of my day, yet in my frustration over something else, my excitement left me. At once, I became insecure and got nervous about my plans. Did I still what to do it? Was I simply forcing someone into my life? Did this person even like me enough to want to spend time with me? I even thought about calling the whole thing off, just to keep my new friend from having to suffer through my company. I squinted tightly as I realized my thoughts. "Why the hell did I lose my excitement?" I asked myself. "Where did it go? What happened? What changed?"

BAM! It hit me ... only one thing had change. One thing and one thing only:

My mood.

I felt fine about everything until I got overly frustrated, that's when I became insecure about the rest of my life. I thought through it logically and finally, my heart joined the knowledge party and it all made sense. I felt like a dumb-ass to be honest. "Ohhhhh, so just because MY feelings changed, doesn't mean anyone else's changed." Duh.

If I had cancelled my plans, my new friend probably would have been super confused since they have no idea what's happening in my head. To them, there was no variable in our plans. All was well, the same as yesterday, the same as five minutes ago, so there was no need to change a thing.

Hmmm. Interesting. Now what? So, I'm feeling a grand shift, but no one else is privy to it. But my shift feels real to me. Don't I need to do something? Don't I need to fix it, make sure things are okay?

I'm chuckling again.

Nope. There's nothing to fix. Nothing has changed. All the insecurity is residing in my mood and not in the world. So, do you know what I did? I did nothing. I recognized the truth, I allowed myself to live in that frustration for a time, I distracted myself with helpful options and guess what. It passed. My excitement returned and I went on with life. Hmmm, growth. I have realized something new and embraced it. I have begun necessary change.

Lets' talk about a different kind of change for a moment though. Change as in coins. Little pieces of metal  that used to commonly be used to pay for things. I say 'used to' because not many people carry cash anymore, and loose change? Are you nuts? You can even use a credit card in most vending machines now. Change is not needed in everyday life. Coins are often discarded carelessly. I have a jar of coins, all coins I have found on the ground, and it's full. But let me ask you a question, just because people don't use them or regard them highly anymore, has their value changed?

No. A quarter is still worth twenty-five cents whether it's in a garbage can or someone's pocket. A dollar is still a dollar when it's made up of ten dimes.

I feel like society's resistance to growth and fear of change has created a lot of the problems we all have in life. In addition, it keeps us stuck in a place where we complain about the same things everyday yet do nothing to improve the issue. We enjoy comfort, even when it's having negative impacts. We like what we know and we fear the unknown. Maybe we're a little afraid of who we will become if we change. I think the biggest fear is, will embracing change make me lose my value? Well, if you have four quarters, do you still have a dollar?

Don't be afraid of the quarters and dimes, or even the pennies. Their value is what it is regardless of how the world perceives them. And our value is not rooted in this world. Who you are inside can only become more clear as you embrace change. I encourage you, if you have a thing in your life that you've known needs some work yet fear is keeping you from making change, take a baby step. Give it a go and choose to believe in your heart that your value won't be tainted.

GREEN

I find it fairly funny that Ryan and I looked at so many houses and looked so carefully but somehow didn’t realize how much we hated the master bathroom in the house that we decided to purchase. We chuckle about it now… how did that happen? How did we not notice the nasty small tub and the ugly linoleum flooring, the broken rusted tub faucet, the 1970’s mirror, the horrible faded and chipped 1980’s fake wood cabinet above the toilet, the laminate countertop and worst of all, the 1980’s strip of 9 bulbous lights right above the mirror? How the heck did we not notice that? I suppose when we looked at the house as a whole, its imperfections faded to the background. And that isn’t such a bad thing, its just surprising to have moved in and then realize how much we hate something we use daily. Our hatred is so strong, we have decided to remodel it.

At first we were just going to do a few simple updates. I bought and installed new brushed nickel towel bars and toilet roll holder. I bought a new light fixture and went to put it up but the wall had not been painted behind the old fixture and there was no extra paint… so we had to wait. We were going to take the ugly above toilet cabinet down but they hadn’t painted behind that either – or the mirror. Turns out the cabinet and mirror were a custom size so there was no way to replace them without painting the entire room. So… since we were going to paint the whole room – why not do a more in-depth remodel. We’ve run into a few more snags…

After a long search for a countertop to fit our strangely sized cabinet, we ordered one we thought would be okay. It wasn’t exactly what we wanted but it was a small upgrade. We were excited to receive it via UPS but I thought it was strange the way the UPS drive left it and ran off as fast as he could. We opened the box and found our marble counter smashed into a million pieces inside the box. Ugh. We took a piece of it out and decided we didn’t really like it anyway so… return! We found one we like much better and it will be ready for pick up the first week of January.

We ordered new tile for the floor – its called “cliks”. It’s a floating tile that can be installed right overtop of your current floor. It seems like a good quality but easier solution to doing regular tile. It took a lot of work to figure out how to get the tiles to fit together right but I persevered and figured it out. We tested the water seal and it seems like its gonna be just fine. The one trick with this tile, is you have to start at a straight corner which we figured wouldn’t be a problem. Hmmmm… not so fast. Our bathroom doesn’t have a straight wall to start from. That’s right, the corners aren’t square, the walls aren’t straight… its very uneven! Not sure what we are going do with that yet but we’ll figure something out. The easy tile isn’t gonna be so easy after all.

We decided to keep our tub but replace the fixtures with new more modern brushed nickel ones. But, we accidentally cracked the water pipe in the wall behind the shower when trying to remove the faucet cover. It was corroded and we used a bit too much muscle. It was a Saturday… so no plumbers available until Monday. We had to turn the water off in our house for the weekend and go stay with the in-laws for a few days. We had to cut out a big hole in the wall of the guest room so the plumber could access the pipes AND the ceiling in the living room now has a nice water stain. Oh boy.

A few hundred dollars later, the plumbing was fixed and the new shower fixtures were installed, mind you we still have the drywall in the guest room to replace and the living room ceiling to repair. But the finished work looked so pretty and the shower head we picked was a nice big rain shower with a few different settings. I couldn’t wait to try this thing out, after all the old one was weak! I was less than impressed with my shower experience though. It seemed this shower head was in need of some Viagra. The water came out strong, but then just drop to the shower floor… no power at all. It was actually worse than the one before. I was very disappointed. Worse, when Ryan asked me how I liked it, I felt bad telling him I didn’t think it was very good.

That night, my father-in-law came over to help Ryan do a few things and we showed him the disappointing shower. He tinkered with it awhile to see if there was something wrong or if there was something could be adjusted. He said we might need to go back to a small shower head but he kept fiddling with it. A few minutes later, he came out of our bathroom and said, “I fixed it!” I went to check it out and saw that he had fixed it. The water was shooting out with power now, the way it should have been. I asked him what he did and he handed me a piece of plastic the size of a penny with a small hole in the center of it. He proceeded to tell me that he had removed this piece of plastic from the showerhead. It had been purposely placed in the showerhead by the manufacturer to reduce the water flow.  This piece of plastic made it possible for the company to call this a “green” showerhead, and we know how everything has to be "green" these days!

Standing in my the bathroom I looked at little tiny “green” hole in the plastic and then compared it to the size of the showerhead. I imagined all that water having to be squeezed through that little opening and it made me laugh. No wonder the water was limping out! I turned and noticed the plaque on my wall. It says:

In my life I always try really hard to understand why things happen, why I feel the way I feel, what could I do differently, how can I make sense of this, that or the other… I am an analyzer.  I realized as I stood there that my analysis of things is making me a “green” follower of Jesus. The more I try to make sense of things, understand the world, myself or my feelings or even force myself to understand scripture… the more limp my faith becomes.  I mean there’s God with all His power, might, knowledge, and control and I step in and try to understand it all. My understanding is just like that piece of plastic… it means well but in the end, it reduces the flow of God’s power into my life.  I'm not trusting the Lord when I decide I must have the answer to everything.  I'm not trusting God when I try to control the flow of life and people. And faith is all about not knowing, not having control, not understanding but still believing no matter what.   I’d be so much better off to do what scripture says and just stop leaning on my own understanding!

I’ve felt a little down since yesterday and I have to honest and say I have no idea why I feel down. There doesn’t seem to be a reason for it. As I was walking home from taking Brett to school this morning I was trying to analyze my emotions so I could fix them… and then I remembered that little piece of plastic. I said to myself, “Wendy, stop being green – let God’s power flow with all its might!” I decided to just let God handle it…to trust Him…to just go with the flow and see what happens.

As for the rest of our bathroom renovation… I'm sure we will run into many other snags.  Stuff will get broken, we will change our minds, hauling out the old junk will require heavy lifting... but I’m glad we decided to do more than just a few cosmetic fixes. Surface work has never worked very well for me… the good stuff in my life has always required major renovation.... mind, body and spirit.