Please welcome Karon Phillips Goodman to ‘Grace Alone…’. Karon is the author ‘Unafraid’. To find out more about the book and Karon’s blog-tour, please visit her website: ‘Unafraid – Living God’s plan On a Ladder and a Promise’ and ‘The Great 5-in5 Blog Tour’.
The old saying goes that change is the only constant we can count on, and while that’s not completely true, it’s a constant we often fear. Because change usually means we can’t count on everything we used to know, it not so gently kicks us out of any comfort zone we may have managed to create, right off the scaffolding we were so carefully navigating. And that can be scary to the point of panic.
Change means we have to adapt to new situations, often new people and new circumstances, with perhaps little warning or preparation. An unwelcome change in relationship, family, work, school, schedule or surroundings can rip out all the security and joy we felt and stop our building. The ladder staggers and the tools wriggle free from our hands as we try to get a grip on the new work-site. Sure, we have to give ourselves time to take hold of the changes we face, but our lives-our temples-suffer when these changes and our fearful responses to them paralyze us.
We see panic and loss, stress and confusion. God sees opportunity, a new page of blueprints.
I know what you’re thinking, and I can agree — it’s often hard to see opportunity for anything good in a change, but it helps when we break the stealth-cloaked opportunity down into two areas — changes within ourselves and the changes outside us — you could call it the design behind the project and the building that others see and feel. And yes, there’s joy there waiting to be discovered amid the immediate rubble from our ladder quaking.
Every change demands action and reaction from us. To regain a little control and peace and focus, we can take the opportunity to change ourselves to better reflect God in all we do – even in response to a perhaps unwanted turn of events, because His grace that makes it all possible is not on back-order by any new developments we can’t control. And what we’ll learn is that positive change in ourselves — a little self-improvement project behind the scenes, if you will — follows because it’s never too late to become a more wise, understanding and effective builder.
Some family changes in the past have allowed me [I could say forced but I won’t :)] to change my behavior toward others and the situations I faced, and I have to admit that while the changes weren’t easy, they were welcome, maybe by me more than anyone else, because it made it easier for me to live with me [and that’s a challenge in the best of times for us control-freaky people]. Yes, the learning curve is steep in this kind of effort, but the resulting progress on your temple will be worth it.
Continue reading “Overcoming the Fear of Change”
