I realized, this morning, that I’m pretty sure my college-aged self would punch my current self squarely in the jaw. I came to this revelation as I cleaned off a dirty dish (which you should always do first!) and put it into the dishwasher. It’s not the act of doing dishes that is so bad (though college-aged me didn’t do it often), it’s the fact that I’m spending my day off from work washing dishes rather than playing video games or sleeping in. Somehow, without seeing it happen, I’ve changed.

We all change. I remember moments as a kid when I swore to myself that I would never grow up, that I would never let the stress oozed by the adults around me be seen in my life. I remember, as a teenager, thinking that I would never check email more than Facebook. College aged me would never pass up a day off of playing video games instead of doing dishes.

“Change is inevitable,” I’ve heard and read countless times but not wanted to believe it. Truthfully, I must admit that the changes I’ve experienced have not all been bad. I’m thankful that the acne covered, bowl-cut sporting, awkward pre-teen is long gone. Years have passed and I’ve become more confident in my theology, political leanings, philosophy of life and understanding of how to do my job. While this change has, in some ways, distanced me from the naïve leanings of my younger years, I can gladly admit that I am my own person, that the changes have made me a better version of myself.

Change is hard. We don’t always want it to come and we mourn when we realize it has. We long for the “good ol days,” and wish we could go back and re-live some of our favorite moments in life. This is not a bad quality: reflection. The thing about looking back is that, while good for helping us learn, it’s not something we can go back and re-do. We are who we are today, regardless of the path that got us here.

The thing about change, though, is to learn from it. Change is not always fun and it can sometimes cause us to do a complete about face. In those moments when life keeps going in spite of us, we must look deep within and find the person we’ve become. We must see that there is nothing we can do to change the path we’ve been traveling, but there is everything we can do to alter where we’re headed.

Life is all about change but, even as our hair gets grayer, we must look for the good in the change. Change will always be with us and the person we were will never, really, be us again. May we have the strength to look back and learn from where we’ve been and look forward to the difficult, yet beautiful, path ahead.

“To everything there is a season…” – Ecclesiastes 3:1