I don’t like change.
I have a fear of the unknown. I like to stick with what’s familiar.
Because if I don’t know something is, then how do I know it will be good? How do I know it won’t be awful? How do I know it won’t lead to the end of the world and the destruction of the universe?
I’ve never enjoyed taking risks.
I make changes when I’m pushed into it. When life becomes so miserably uncomfortable that I can’t stand it anymore, then I start to consider that maybe, just maybe, the unknown thing that I’m afraid of might be better than whatever I’ve got right now.
I started this blog when I was unhappy and frustrated. Both times. I set up the blog when my family was dealing with covid. It was something I could do from home while I waited for our quarantines to be over. I actually launched the blog eight months later when I had another very frustrating morning when nothing was going as planned.
If I’m happy, I won’t change.
I don’t often take risks and do new things when I’m happy and content. It takes an unpleasant mix of discontent, frustration, anxiety, fear, impatience and general misery to get me trying new things.
And sometimes God has to step in and close some doors for me before I will walk through the open ones.
Our house story
That combination was what led us to the house we live in now. I was frustrated beyond words with trying to find a new house. It just wasn’t working out. And yet it was time to move. We had stayed in our previous home far too long already, mostly because it was too much work to find a new home and move. The thought of the whole moving process was so daunting and so overwhelming that we always ended up just staying put.
But it was past time to find a new home. Our large family simply didn’t fit the old one. And in our frustration, we settled on a property that looked like it would do. We were told that the property was under contract but that things weren’t going well and that it was going to fall through.
So it was upsetting and disappointing when we were told that the prospective buyer was not at all prepared to let the property go. We had even raised our offer higher that we planned, but we were still turned down. If we had known that the property really was “under contract” – for real – we wouldn’t have bothered with our offer in the first place.
In my frustration, I started driving around our town day after day, just looking for houses for sale. At first, it was one disappointment after another. Then one day, I was driving down a street just two streets over from where we were currently living, and I saw a “For Sale” sign that hadn’t been there three days earlier. It was just what we wanted.
The property was being sold by owner and wasn’t being listed with a real estate agent. Basically, prospective buyers had to be driving by the house and see the sign.
I would never have been driving down that road if I hadn’t been actively searching for a house. It was a road I almost never used. And I wouldn’t have been searching for a house in that manner if I hadn’t been so frustrated with our lack of success everywhere else.
Because the house wasn’t listed with a real estate agency (and maybe wasn’t listed anywhere online – our realtor had to verify that it was really was for sale!), there wasn’t much competition. We bought it for a very low price and moved in a week later.
Thank God we couldn’t buy that other house we tried to buy! It really wasn’t what we wanted, but we thought it was the best we could do. God knew better!
Thank God I got so frustrated with our housing search that I started driving around town looking for “sale” signs.
God knew what He was doing.
God always knows.
I wish He would just tell us what’s going on, but that’s not how He works. He uses my frustration and discouragement to push me to try new things. And He uses these problems to teach me to trust Him.
I can think of other times when problems pushed me to make changes.
A job change many years ago happened when the wonderful job I currently had became unbearably stressful. I went from being extremely happy at work to having so much work-related anxiety that it affected my sleep. A couple of months later, I had a new job. A job in a low-income community that I would have been afraid to take if I hadn’t been so desperate. But I was offered the job at the interview, accepted it the next day, and started work two weeks later. It turned out to be a good experience that I will always be thankful for.
My husband’s business was started in another moment of crisis. He had been talking about starting his own business for years, but I didn’t agree to it until all the “safe” options in my comfort zone were unexpectedly yanked out from under me.
Remember Romans 8:28?
God very often uses bad things to create good things.
If you’re going through a bad situation right now, take courage. God knows what He is doing. You may look back on the situation years from now and be very thankful it happened.