For some people, change is easy. They flow like a river, taking the sudden shifts in direction smoothly. Others struggle with it. It’s a raging river they have to cross, not flow down. Usually, I’m the former.

But not this time.

Change is easier when emotions aren’t deeply involved. Things get hard when the smooth river starts to rage. When your flesh is fighting against the change and nothing makes sense and you’re getting hit by rocks at every turn.

Change doesn’t always hurt, but when it does it hurts me deeply. It’s a grief of what could have been. I try to make myself forget all of the “could’ve”s and “what if”s that flood my mind. I know change doesn’t affect everyone this way, but it’s how it affects me.

Before I decided to do what God was already telling me, we fought about it. A lot. I wasn’t gonna follow Him easy this time. You’d think as a missionary I would’ve learned by now… not quite. In my mind, it wasn’t like the first time I said yes. I wasn’t saying yes to go… I was saying yes to leave. Yes meant going to America. Yes meant moving to a totally different country with another language when I was just getting the hang of this one. It was leaving all the relationships I had spent 3 years building. It was leaving the life I had fallen in love with.

For a ghost. For a life that I had no idea what it would look like.

During all of this, God took me to a verse in Job:

Though He slay me, I will hope in Him;
yet I will argue my ways to His face.

Oh, I was arguing. He had most definitely heard my piece. And I definitely felt like He was slaying me. But He asked me: Where is your hope?

I can tell you where it wasn’t: in Him. My hope had been in the wrong place. I had it in the future I had planned for myself. It was in what I wanted to do, not what He planned. And even though what He wanted me to do was something I had desired for years, it was easier to stay where I was. It hurt less.”Just a little longer?” I asked. He said no. I shut up. Then put my hope in Him.

How foolish are we? I was literally arguing with the Creator of the universe about my future.

I decided to follow that ghost of a life and I can already tell it is one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. I’m going where I’ve always wanted to go to do what I love. It’s not what I planned; it’s so much better.

To sum it up: Hope in Him and He will work everything out. Even if it doesn’t make sense to you, it makes perfect sense to Him. He is for you. He loves you. Just trust Him.

Change is inevitable. Life is full of it. It always hurts to close a book, especially when it’s your favorite one. You know the one, the one that’s written all in with torn pages and tea stains, practically falling apart. But there is so much anticipation for opening the next. On the shelf sits a book with blank pages, an exciting story waiting to be told. But it has one condition: you’ve got to live it first.