Keep the Change

"All this is for your benefit, so that the grace that is reaching more and more people may cause thanksgiving to overflow to the glory of God." 2 Corinthians 4:15

Our church is kicking off the beginning of our transition from our current building on Terra Vista Drive to the former Leath furniture building. Our pastor recently launched into a sermon series on change to facilitate this process and I find it especially relevant to my life.
Today I scurried around the house and scooped up all the loose change I could find that weighed down my purses, boxes in the basement, and my car. There's nothing that aggravates me more than loose change. I'm always tempted to tell the cashier, "Keep the change!" It dirties my designer bags and weighs me down. (I hate shoving change in my Kate Spade wallet because I don't want to stretch it out...but then I end up leaving it at the bottom of my purse which soils the bottom of my nice bags, too).
I took a ziplock bag full of change to the bank and it totaled a whopping $81.41.
Small change adds up and often amounts to something big. Our pastor said he was moved by reading a memoir called "Now and Then" about a professor who gave up his career to transition to full-time writing. The process brought about incredible loneliness in his life as he missed the camaraderie of his colleagues, he lived in fear of being a failure if he didn't succeed, and this led to physical symptoms of depression. He was in a funk. That about sums up my first six months of marriage!
Yet, he reflected many years later, life went on all over the place...small things became big blessings, like taking the kids to school in the morning...In hindsight he realized some of the greatest moments of his life happened in the midst of bemoaning the darkness.
The same holds true for myself. For several months after I married Jeff, I tortured myself with questions of whether I did the right thing. My career prospects tanked and despite my aggressive efforts, nothing materialized for me job-wise. But looking back, it was such a blessing. While I was crying about why I wasn't marketable in the workforce, I failed to see the Lord provided the perfect situation for me: I left a highly stressful and borderline abusive workplace in favor of the stress-free life-style of writing articles from home with the occasional commute. Sure, it was a step-down financially, but as Jeff pointed out, if I kept my on-air job I would've gone crazy transitioning to life as a step-mom. I devoted the extra time to learn to cook and clean, invest in the children, spend quality time with my husband, and volunteer at church. And while I may not be making as much money as I did in the past, my income still allowed us to start a savings plan to support our future family and to pay for our travel expenses to Hawaii for the next few years.
We often miss the blessings of today because we look back at what we missed and don't allow the Lord to change our inner reality.
I heard a statistic that 9 times of out of 10 people choose the security of a bad past over a healthy future because they're insecure of what the unexpected holds.
I hope that I have the confidence to lean into the Lord in the days ahead to embrace an eternal perspective so that I welcome positive change and don't miss out on the present because I'm blinded by glamorizing the past. I pray for myself and my husband that we see God working in the midst of everything, no matter the circumstance.