This week for me has been good but busy. First, we celebrated Thanksgiving not once but two times. Then, we started decorating our house for Christmas. We had some other activities and family time as well. Weeks like this can be somewhat overwhelming for me. I struggle to get it all done, smile through it all, and find time to relax amid all the activities.
I never found adequate time this week to sit down and write a blog post. I have several in the queue written and ready to go, but those posts didn’t seem right for Thanksgiving week. So I made up my mind that I would just skip this week.
But then I woke up, and the following memory was on Facebook. This Facebook post was written one year ago today. As I read through it, I realized a few things…
- I should’ve started blogging long ago because I obviously process through writing.
- I was ahead in my decorating last year compared to this year.
- I was hurting really bad. I was processing things and struggling; you can feel it in my words.
This entire post is obviously about the happenings at Tree Town Baptist. You can hear me mourning the loss of those friendships that I talked about in earlier posts. It’s all there. Veiled and hidden so as not to anger anyone from Tree Town on Facebook, but it’s all there.
This year as I read it, I’m thankful for how far I’ve come. I’m grateful that I started blogging and working through things. I’m thankful that it’s all out there now, that people can read and know what happened to me. I’m grateful that I have people reach out to me regularly. They tell me that hearing my story has helped them begin healing or helped them realize that they aren’t crazy and the things they are experiencing are real.
That’s what I wanted from the very beginning.
Here’s that Facebook post…
Change
This year while we were decorating for Christmas, we decided we wanted to put a Christmas tree in the dining room so we could have one in our front window. I’ve always loved driving by houses and seeing other people’s Christmas trees in their windows. We’ve discussed doing this before, but the dining table was always in the way.
But wait… is furniture immovable, is it permanently placed?
Surely the table would only work one way. It’s too long to go the other way.
But wait… it has a leaf that can be removed, so it can be made smaller.
So with all of this newfound knowledge, we removed the leaf and turned the dining room table in the other direction. And you know what? The dining room looks so much better, the tree fits exactly where we wanted, we have more room… it’s actually better all the way around. We just had it in our minds that it would only work one way.
Change… it’s sometimes characterized as a bad thing, but should it be something we are more thankful for? Are we trying to keep our proverbial dining room arranged just as it has always been? Do we stop to realize that something that seems permanent is actually moveable? Is it sometimes necessary to remove something from our lives that would seem to make us smaller or less prominent?
If we consider our bodies as the temple of God, could we then also think that this temple has rooms, much like our homes? Could we assume that sometimes the different rooms need to be changed in some way? Maybe those rooms either need to be rearranged or sometimes things in those rooms need to be discarded altogether, either to make more room in general or make room for different things.
Here’s what I know for sure. Over the past two years, I’ve felt and seen God make huge changes in my life. Some were painful, some were sad, and sometimes I wish some of those things and people were still in my life. Sometimes I look around and wish things could’ve stayed the way they were, that friendships could’ve stood the test of time, that I could still just be trucking along in my “dining room” the way I had it figured out, the way I planned it, the way I envisioned it needed to be. But when I look around, I know that God had better plans. I know that He took that table and moved it in a different direction. He threw away the old dusty stuff that I was attached to. He made the room feel bigger, gave me space to breathe, and showed me that more things in a space aren’t always better. Even things I thought were necessary. You don’t always need seating for 8. Maybe you only need seating for 6.
It’s so easy to become accustomed to things just as they are. It’s easy to think that nothing can be moved, nothing can be rearranged, and certainly, things can’t be removed altogether.
But, what if God knows best, and what if with some changes that at first seem unnecessary and may even be painful, eventually you see that He knew best? With His changes, your life looks better…you have room to move and breathe. Your light can shine brighter because He made room in front of the window.
There have been even more changes in my life since I made that post. Change has never been something I’ve embraced, but I’m slowly realizing that holding onto things more loosely and letting God have control is so much better. He has proven Himself over and over.
A funny thing is that now we have removed the dining room entirely. We sold the table and moved the pool table to the space where the dining room table was before. So the room has been completely repurposed. We even changed the light fixture…and that light fixture was originally my favorite one in the house. Still, I decided that what I once thought was best was different from what the space needed. In fact, I’ve rearranged the entire first floor of my house several times this year. It’s amazing how good a little change can make you feel. It makes things feel new again!
There has been lots of change in not only my furniture placement but also in my life. And today, I am indeed thankful for all that change and I embrace it while I trust that my Heavenly Father wants what He knows is best for me.
Until Next Time,
Whitney