Life as I knew it.

Sometimes I feel like I woke up and everything was completely different. The last six months a mere memory, and, like magic, I’ve been jolted into the present with no recollection of the past. I sit up in bed, run my hands through my hair, and wonder how exactly I got here.Other times I feel like each little moment and decision over the past six months, if not six years, has led me to this place. The changes so infinitesimal I hardly noticed, only to realize looking back that gradually yesterday has added up to today.Whichever way it is—small changes over time or sudden ones happening all at once—I’m here now, and in this moment I’m on the cusp of life as I know it becoming life as I knew it.And that’s scary.But it’s also beautifully exciting.The specific changes might be different for each of us, but if you live long enough, you too are bound to have these out-of-body moments where you look down below at the life you’ve created and wonder why. Why do things have to change when I liked them just fine the way they were. I’m comfortable. I’m secure. I know the routine, don’t alter it now.A sudden illness.Going off to college.An unexpected spark that ignites your own.Your childhood home becoming the stuff of memory.The birth of a baby.The distance of a friend.If change is inevitable, then why do we greet it like a stranger stumbling onto our doorstep every time it turns up? Shouldn’t it instead be like greeting an old friend we haven’t seen in a while, an unexpected but happy occurrence?We’ve learned to associate change with destruction—the destruction of our “normal,” destruction of the status quo, destruction of plans and dreams—but what if destruction is just what we needed? What if change is God’s way of shaking us out of complacency and into a more complete dependence on Him?What if change was the plan all along?If I’m being honest, right now I’m trying to come to grips with that notion, grieving the very idea of life as I knew it. My parents are moving across the country, and we’re preparing to say goodbye to the blue house in the quiet neighborhood that we’ve always called home.The walls of that house on the golf course hold a million and a half memories—most sweeter than one could ever hope for with some hard, difficult, and sad ones sprinkled in too. Tears and smiles. Laughs and sleepless nights. Dance rehearsals and frustrating moments (most involving math homework), but all of it adding up to a life, not just mine, but that of my family’s as well.And that’s why it’s hard to give up, because that house—that driveway we used to sled down, that basketball court where I learned the hard way where my talents did (and did not) lie, that tree I sat under almost every day in the summer, that table where we laughed until we cried, and that bed I laid my head down in every night until I was eighteen—that place is me, it’s us, and I’m not ready to say goodbye.But if I’ve learned anything in my short twenty-three years it’s this: God can (and will) use everything for good, even the hard things, the sad things, and the just plain sucky things. That’s just how He rolls.So yes, I’ll grieve the loss of life as I knew it. But I’ll also celebrate, because it’s worth celebrating. It’s worth looking back and smiling. And better yet, tomorrow is worth celebrating too.God uses change to renew us, to transform us, to refine us. He was there in life as we knew it, but He’s also going to be there in life as we know it, even when it's so different than we ever imagined.words by Kaylyn Deiter and photo by Arianna Taralson