Conquering Change

To all my readers, I am deeply sorry for never finishing the series "Conquering Change." After digging deep within each category: fear, complaining/fussing, fight/avoid, frustration, and overwhelmed, I realized that I was not ready to continue in this journey of overcoming change. To be completely honest, I may have been avoiding the ending because I was not ready to accept the change that is overtaking my life. How am I to expect you to face and embrace your change when I cannot do the same with my own. This does not excuse the fact I left each of you hanging for an ENTIRE month! Just know that I feel super dumb and have been convicted for not being honest with you in the first place and am truly sorry for reacting exactly how I said not to (insert face palm emoji). After a month of refusing to pray, not allowing acceptance into my life, and dealing with constant spiritual warfare, God has graciously gotten a hold of my heart and here I am at face and embrace.

Let's review what the definition of change is: "to make different in some particular way," "to make radically different," "to undergo transformation, transition, or substitution," or "to undergo a modification of," (Merriam-Webster). Just reading the definitions brings about a desire to avoid it all! All four descriptions are so relevant to my current state of life. However, we are not just in this life to experience change, but to conquer it. Therefore, the definition of conquer is: "to gain mastery over or win by overcoming obstacles or opposition," "to overcome by mental or moral power." or my favorite, "to be victorious," (Merriam-Webster). Wow, it goes from one extreme to the other. Change and conquer seem like complete opposites. So how in the world do you combine the two? By facing and embracing.

In order to truly conquer change, you MUST face it and then embrace it. In other words, we need to recognize the difference in our lives, we need to accept the fact we cannot control our transformed way of living or the modifications that are being made by other people's decisions or our own. Embracing change is a little more complicated because in order to fully grasp what is going on, one must take the time to become a master at the new. Grabbing a hold of change is like attempting to climb up a muddy hill. It is not impossible but it does require HELP!

My favorite word, help (said sarcastically). It is so, so hard for me to recognize I need help, let alone ask for it! But as I have found in the passing month, it is the only way to genuinely live in victory over change. What does asking for help look like? There are four different types of people you can ask for assistance, they are: family, friends, a counselor, and God. Let's start with the less likely, a counselor. For me personally, it is my favorite type of person to ask for help from; however, it cannot be the only one. The counselor I go to monthly even told me that I need to reach out to other people and begin to combine journeys with them in my everyday life. Some might not even need to attend a session of counseling but if you have any form of anxiety, night terrors, panic, extreme fears, depression, the list could go on and on, you may need to put your pride aside and reach out to a professional. The next type of person we are going to talk about is family. For many of you, the word family brings about super negative or super positive thoughts. Personally, this is part of my change I need to face and embrace. Yet, there are people in my family that I can trust and whom I need to let a little closer. The third type of person you can ask for help is friends. This is another word that not only brings about anxiety but brings about negative connotations for many of us. Yet, to others it is there go to for asking for assistance both in general and personal instances. It is okay to take risks on people. It is okay to get hurt by people. But, it is never okay to live a life of solitude. Therefore, whatever form of person you bring in as you conquer change, give them grace as well as take it day by day, hour by hour. Some great verses for how a community of people can be helpful as well as expectations for fellow believers (friends and family) are: "Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you," Colossians 3:13 (NIV), "Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective," James 5:16 (NIV), and "A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for a time of adversity," Proverbs 17:17 (NIV).

The last type of person is God. I almost find it irritating at times to ask God for help because He already knows what I need. However, God wants to be invited into our change, into our chaos. God is gentle and kind, He will not push us into asking for His help but gives us free will so that we can choose to do life with our without Him. There are tons of scriptures where God asks us to pray or Jesus and or the disciples give an example of how praying brings about peace, healing, and a closer relationship with our Creator. What I have found personally is that going on my knees and asking God for help humbles me but also shows me just how loving and caring He is. I mean the creator of the entire universe takes time to listen to my deepest thoughts and after revealing my truest self, still loves me! Personally, there is not a change that God has not helped me get through. And in my current change, it is no different. The key is ASKING! Taking time to pray, to journal, to sit in silence before God has been huge in each season of change within my life.

The advice I give you about choosing the types of people, is always choose God and then two-three others to really let within the deepest parts of your life. It really does help to talk it out, to let it out, and to confess where you have been choosing wrongly.

Some more private things you can also do to face and embrace is to recognize ways in which you cannot change your circumstances, then brain storm ways you can help or modify your change. In each blog of the series, I also listed out multiple practical ways to help within conquering change per each reaction we tend to go to first before facing and embracing. But now, as the series comes to a close, I urge you greatly to take time for personal reflection, personal acceptance, asking for help, and immerse each situation in a ton of prayer.

P.S. Always here for each of you! WE CAN CONQUER CHANGE!