seasons of change

change, changing, changed.

A junior in high school and those three simple words in different forms still seem foreign.

They crawl around the back of my mind, pulling on the what ifs. 

I push off the thoughts and cling to what I know, but I know that the change, the impact, is coming for me. 

"I don't want to move to Georgia"

"I don't want to quit dance"

"I'm not ready to grow up and have relationships"

"I don't want to leave my friends"

All this change, these possible life moments and unknowns looming around my conscious.

When did I tie my own wings to the ground and say I wasn't allowed to fly further than the leash I put around my own neck?

Fearful of the grass I can't see because I limited myself to a four by four patch.

I put up a wall around my heart, my 'comfort zone' wall. It's filled with the same places, faces, and smells. It hardly ever changes and if there's a bump, I jump over it and keep going.

When I reach the wall I silently note, 'no need to go further, JacyRayn, you are doing just fine right here'.

So I don't.

I stay right there in the same place around the same people in the same places.

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What I never noted though, was with this exile of change in my life, my heart grows cold and numb. It can no longer help the new people who need the warmth and love of Jesus to fill their holes to the very brim. The wall does not allow for me to overflow on to bare soil and wait for the new to grow.

When you limit yourself to the same grass, it stops growing eventually, and withers.

"There is a time for everything,
    and a season for every activity under the heavens:
    a time to be born and a time to die,
    a time to plant and a time to uproot,
    a time to kill and a time to heal,
    a time to tear down and a time to build,
    a time to weep and a time to laugh,
    a time to mourn and a time to dance,
    a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
    a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
    a time to search and a time to give up,
    a time to keep and a time to throw away,
    a time to tear and a time to mend,
    a time to be silent and a time to speak,
    a time to love and a time to hate,
    a time for war and a time for peace.

He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end. "  

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8;11

There's a reason that the farmer moves his cows and horses from one field to another.

It's not because he wants them to be shocked by the change of atmosphere or because he just feels that they got too comfortable in the other one; it's because he's taking care of them and wants them to be well fed. He cares about their well being! 

God does not bring change out of hate or 'because He feels like it', He does it out of love, my friends. 

I am learning that while change can be unnerving and reckless, when you take yourself off the lead rope you receive freedom. Freedom comes with responsibilities, but wouldn't you rather be free to experience life from every point aside from just one? 

Keep your love, amigos.

-jr xx