Everything's Changing

Everything is changing around me. Because of the Camp fire, I’ve not hung pictures in my rental because the walls are the color of ash; they are the pallid skin and I am the bones. And because life is hard, and oh God I didn’t ask for it!

I’m riding a swayback horse on an old carousel, but instead of grabbing hold of the prize with each pass, the dispenser ejects the entire arsenal of iron and brass rings into my gut. Oh, this circuitous surrendering of hope!

Something’s changing within me… shifting, idling, lamenting, lauding. This is a crazy whirligig world and as for me, I can take only so much! Doesn’t there have to be at least one constant? If not, who can I count on? If not, who can count on me?

Recently I described to a friend that I feel a new and inexplicable pull to taking new risks for God. But old patterns always intrude, causing a slip-back, slip-off, slip-any-old-way, and call it a day. Until the joy of the pull beckons once again. It feels like “It Must be an Angel (Playing with my Heart)” [Eurythmics, 1985.]

My friend told me to fight through faint-heartedness. Fight! So, I do. I fight through fears (and tears) that change has engendered; for glimpses of great courage and derring-do; for deeper kinship with church, Sunday school, Bible studies, and you. Because of the fire, I fight to understand, embrace, and act on new stuff within me.

Could a new covenant be struck between God and me that eliminates all but courageous growth in Him? One Unchangeable and Permanent Priest who can save me to the uttermost? (Heb. 7:23-25). Will He wait for me until I stop crying?

What better time for me to leave in the ashes parts of me that I never liked? What better time for me, for whom Christ cries, to grab hold of this new normal before it passes me by? What better time?

Life is hard, dear Jesus. Change me, change me.