Timing is everything, they say.  Looking back on my life I see great, sweeping changes that occured throughout the years of my life so far.  I am in the midst of a great change now, and I see it in real time.  It’s a good feeling, perhaps because I have a bit of control, being aware of what’s going on.  However, much of the time that I was right in the midst of change, I didn’t see it so clearly.  Change was swirling around me and it was only after the dust had settled that I realized life has changed.

One huge change in my life in my teens was my parents’ marriage falling apart.  As an adult, I finally put words on paper about the great wound this left on my life, though I do understand as an adult that it was bound to happen.  There was only one person in that union who was 100% committed and things just can’t work out when that is the case.  (The committed one was my mother, by the way.) 

I don’t want to get sidetracked on the issue of marriage, but rather, change is on my mind today.  The great change in my life during those years was not my doing at all, but I let it affect my decisions, my paths in life, and my spirit.  I think I was too young to know otherwise.  I learned a great lesson, though, during that time in my life about how hard it is to stay the course when others are being shipwrecked. 

Of course we must yield in some fashion to life and the changes forced upon us by tragedy and the decisions of others — we have no choice in some things, but in other ways we have to keep looking to our highest callings so that our own choices still reflect our truest, most noble desires.

Queen Elizabeth II said that the colonies were lost because Britain lacked the statesmanship “to know the right time, and the manner of yielding what is impossible to keep.”

I like to ponder that.  There’s more to that than I can understand and a large part of it is providence, but it’s evidence again that some things are just bound to happen.  I think there’s a lesson there about yielding to certain events without losing ourselves in the process.  There have been times that I couldn’t see the difference and I threw the baby out with the bath water! 

Growing up in the Sandhills of North Carolina.

The change that is occurring in my life right now — my being back home again full time — is something that I have wanted for a long time.  It’s something I have been looking for.  There are still things in my life that I must yield to, such as the need for insurance, medical issues that surface from time to time, but being here for my children and finding a way to keep that the foremost thing right now, well that’s what’s important to me.  I’m so thankful for the changes that are bringing me back home.

I have friends who are pondering making great changes right now.  I have been asked, “Should I do this?”  The only thing I have to say is that it’s a good thing to write down your most precious desires, the things that you most want to be able to say you accomplished, and see if the changes you are making will line up with those desires.

Lynn