Everything Changes, But God Doesn’t

Sawyer towers over me now, but I remember when a much smaller version of him used to stand next to me on the front row in church. For what felt like years, during the closing prayer he would reach over and wrap his little arms around my waist in a familiar hug. Casually, he made a habit of lavishing his love on me the way only a little boy can. Now he’s 17, and his last year of high school has arrived, his last year at home.

I’ve been through senior year before. This is my second rodeo, so to speak. He’s filling out college applications, making plans, dreaming about a future beyond the here and now. Around this time every year, moms take to the internet and lament the changes. In child-raising, so many phases begin and end that it becomes almost a way of life, like you’re riding a roller coaster that never stops making your stomach drop. The reality is that in parenthood change is always at your door, and I think it could be universally acknowledged among parents everywhere that you never really get used to it.

Change is good. This is one thing that I know. Without change, our kids would never grow, and neither would we. We need catalysts for growth, because if it were left up to us, we would try to maintain the status quo as often as possible. We don’t even know how short-sighted we are and how much we would try to control our lives, freezing time for reasons like ease and comfort. When phases shift, God works. While we’re reeling from the whiplash of yet another life event that makes everything different, God grants a deeper understanding of His love and care, with a knowing that we could never have discovered hiding out in the status quo.

God has purposes behind the feelings we experience when life shifts. When we think about sweet days past that will never come our way again, our hearts ache, and there is true meaning here. Deep longing is such a raw, human emotion, and it points to a few things. One thing is that only God truly satisfies. All of the best and most precious things in the world that we can think of, including phases of life, are so temporary. When we feel deep longing, it reminds us that we need a God who never leaves. His phase is never over. His time is always now.

Another thing we learn through the heartaches that come with change is that we have a God who never, ever changes. Not only is He forever, His attributes are always the same. He is eternally loving, compassionate, awesome, and worthy of glory. The list of His immutable virtues is endless. He fulfills a longing in us for certainty. For confidence. God will always be the same, even when our little spiky-haired first graders grow into 6 feet tall men and walk out the door. Our never-changing God is with us through every change, and He is transforming us, phase by phase.

For me, this will be a year of remembering, of cheering, of planning, of cherishing. But it will also be a year of growing, focusing on who my God always is, and hoping He will make me more like Jesus in this phase and all the phases to come.