Change

Change is the inevitability we'd do well to embrace.

Change. Are you for it or against it?

I've found that change is the thing people say they want but rarely appreciate when they get it. I am no exception. I want a healthier body, just with inconsistent sleep and a less than intentional nutritional approach. I want a better financial position while buying whatever I want whenever I want it. I want a masterful balance between faith, recreation, vocation, and philanthropy without the increased discipline to manage it all. Is that too much to ask?

As it turns out, it might be lol.

What I've learned is that I'm not opposed to change at all. I just don't like the cost of it. I have to give up too much. It takes too long. I change in ways I'm not asking for. What I get in the end hardly looks like what I wanted when I first asked. It's rarely what I signed up for.

And yet, if I see it through, I never fail to get exactly what I need.

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One of the most recent examples is when I decided I wanted to be bi-coastal. Living in LA, I was debating whether to pack up and head east. The west coast was great, but it felt incomplete. Most of my family was back east, my parents were aging, I missed a certain grittiness that only exists there. I was even missing the seasons. I knew I had to address feeling homesick.

Then I thought: why do I have to choose? LA was offering me incredible opportunities that required my presence, and the east coast was calling me in a way I needed to answer. So I did what any girl like me would do — out came the spreadsheet, complete with all the parameters and algorithms my heart could love. After deep analysis and conversations with close friends, I landed on five cities: New York, Toronto, Baltimore, Atlanta, and Houston. I chose New York. Time to go back home.

What I didn't take into consideration is that God had other plans. Atlanta it is.

How do I know? I'll spare you the details, but the blocks in my attempt to get life set up in NYC were so pointed they became comical. Enough to make you stop and get curious. Meanwhile, I kept finding myself in Atlanta, becoming more convicted by the day — about a city I was absolutely certain I would never live in.

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Here's what I didn't know was happening in the background: my family would eventually move south as they retired. Close family I hadn't anticipated would end up in Atlanta too, right after me. I got to reconnect with family already living here that I didn't even know I was missing. And slowly, quietly, God began turning what I would have called foreign land into something that actually felt like home.

All I knew at the time was that I wanted a base closer to my family, a place I could call home instead of just where I reside, and a deeper relationship with my faith. Atlanta was not a strong contender for any of those things in my mind. But God knew I needed all three, and He knew I needed a place where I could hear Him better while being positioned for something only He could see.

Oh, how I struggled with this. This was one of the hardest changes of my life. It felt like punishment. No shade to Atlanta — honestly. I've been here long enough to realize I still don't know the city well enough to have a strong opinion about it. What I knew for sure was that nothing about it had anything to do with who I was.

I wasn't wrong. It just had everything to do with who I'm becoming...

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I think about this whenever I watch people navigate change, myself very much included. We scream "I want change" while keeping everything exactly the same. We want a better relationship but won't let go of the one that doesn't meet the standard. We want the title and the pay without demonstrating the qualities first. It's comical, honestly. The joke is on all of us. But underneath the comedy is something worth sitting with.

What I've realized is that I was never really fighting change itself. I was fighting the how of it. I wanted the outcome without surrendering the terms. As it turns out, the how — the part you don't get to control — is actually the biggest part of change itself.

So if I want the change I say I want, I have to take everything that comes with it. Even when it looks nothing like what I asked for. Even when it lands me somewhere I never would have chosen.

That's usually exactly where I need to be.