Dirty Diapers

Let's face it: change is hard. From the time we're little, we fight change. Last Sunday during nursery duty at church, the little one-year-olds in my classroom cried when it was their turn for a diaper change. Although it's a sight I've seen many times before, a thought struck me this particular day.

Those one-year-olds would be perfectly happy to keep their stinky diapers on, to never change them. They would rather be smelly than given a new one. More analogies came to me. I, for example, sucked my thumb when I was little. When people told me I was growing too big to be sucking my thumb, I defiantly told them I didn't care. I was content with the idea of being a thumb-sucker for the rest of my life. While I laugh now at my childish antics, I realize that the fear of change is deeply ingrained in all of us. Of course, some of us are better at adapting to change than others, but to a certain extent, there are things in our lives that we want to be constant: having a loving family, a good job, close friends, etc.

I'm not going to lie... sometimes, change can be the pits. When I was fourteen, my best friend moved away. I lost my grandmother this past January, and not a day goes by that I don't miss her. I've lost friends due to distance and time, and the list goes on and on.

Yet, change is a necessary part of life. This year especially, I've had to come to terms with the knowledge that I can't go back to being the little tomboy that I was ten years ago. I just recently graduated high school, closing one chapter of my life and starting the next. We can't prevent change, even if we hate it with every fiber of our beings; it's unstoppable.

The good news is that there's a reason behind change. If the one-year-olds had been given their way last Sunday, they might have been happy about it for a while, but those stinky, filthy diapers might have led to sickness or rashes. The other nursery workers and I didn't change the dirty diapers to hurt them; we changed them to help them. The same principle applies to those over the age of one, too. We often don't understand why change happens, and sometimes, we fight it. Yet, we can be comforted with the knowledge that God has us in the palm of His hand. That's one of the many things that's so awesome about Him: the stories of our lives aren't floating around in limbo. Before we were born, He wrote the stories. Jeremiah 29:11 says, "'For I know the plans I have for you,' declares the Lord, 'plans for your welfare and not for calamity, plans to give you a hope and a future.'"

In hindsight (hindsight is such a beautiful thing!), I'm thankful I finally stopped sucking my thumb. I'm thankful I had braces, even though people teased me and I felt like an alien. I'm thankful for the hard changes, too, because they have made me mature and showed me that God loves me so much that He wants to teach me hard lessons that will benefit me in the future. 1 Corinthians 13 says that eventually, we have to put aside our childish ways and become adults. I can't become a child again, which means I have many more responsibilities now and more is expected of me. Still, I look forward to whatever God has planned for me, and I'm thankful that in an ever-changing world, He will never change.