Ch-ch-ch-changes!

You see and hear little sayings and quotes about change...and most of them are true. The only constant in the world is change. This truth has never been more apparent to me...

The summer before my 5th grade year, my family moved from Louisville, Kentucky to Alabama. I was devastated. When the school year began I did NOT fit in. At ALL. I had a weird Kentucky accent. I was one of the few minorities in advanced classes and all my classmates had been friends since Kindergarten. For the first month or so of school I came home daily crying, begging my parents to just give up their new jobs and take the family back HOME. Of course they didn't. In fact, my Dad told me, "This is home now. We can't go back. We can only go forward." Basically, things were changing. And I just needed to deal with that truth.

I am reminded of the move to Alabama because just like then my life has change--irrevocably. When we moved the change was instant. We got little notice. We got no vote. We were just moving. But today I looked up and I'm almost 25-years-old and my role within my family has shifted to something I don't recognize. I'm not a little kid anymore. I don't live at home. I'm not a part of the day-to-day dealings of my immediate family. My kid brother, God love him, but he's almost a stranger to me. He lives a life I'm not apart of. All throughout this holiday break I was forced to accept a truth--this isn't your home. You don't live here anymore...hell, if we're being honest, you NEVER lived here. Changes.

At first this startling truth upset me--it made me sad, as if I was somehow being kicked out of my family--out of their lives. But that's not the case. I took my path. I did what my parents expected of me (and what I wanted to do). I grew up. I spread my wings. I moved out. I changed. I was supposed to change and I did. You can't change but then expect all other aspects of life to remain the same. Relationships have to adjust and shift. Expectations have to change. And that's ok. I get to become something new within this family.

I remember having a philosophical conversation about death with a friend on a road trip. We talked about our fears concerning the topic and I recall calmly stating, "Its not so scary because everybody does it." That's how I feel about my life right now--everybody, God willing, goes from kid to adolescent to adult. You were supposed to move away from Mom and Dad. You aren't supposed to have a safety net anymore. We're supposed to change. Without change Daddy's girl doesn't get to become someone's wife, someone's mother, someone's attorney. And when you look at it like that, it becomes just a little less scary. Only a little bit. But what's even scarier? Not changing. Staying in the same place. Being stagnate. For me, that's even scarier than death.