Change

Donald Miller wrote one of my favorite written passages in the introduction to his book Through Painted Deserts. He talks about change in a way that is both beautiful and heart-breaking, hopeful and melancholy. But I find that change is that way; it is a paradox. He writes:

“…I could not have known then that everybody, every person, has to leave, has to change like seasons; they have to or they die. The seasons remind me that I must keep changing, and I want to change, because it is God’s way. All my life I have been changing. I changed from a baby to a child, from soft toys to play daggers. I changed into a teenager to drive a car, into a worker to spend some money. I will change into a husband to love a woman, into a father to love a child, change houses so we are near water, and again so we are near mountains, and again so we are near friends, keep changing with my wife, getting our love so it dies and gets born again and again, like a garden, fed by four seasons, a cycle of change. Everybody has to change, or they expire. Everybody has to leave their home and come back so they can love it again for all new reasons.

I want to keep my soul fertile for the changes, so things keep getting born in me, so things keep dying when it is time for things to die. I want to keep walking away from the person I was a moment ago, because a mind was made to figure things out, not to read the same page recurrently.

Only the good stories have the characters different at the end than they were at the beginning. And the closest thing I can liken life to is a book, the way it stretches out on paper, page after page, as if to trick the mind into thinking it isn’t all happening at once…”

Everything is changing. I left home for a year and I came back again. I had two worlds and somehow they combined, but they are so far away from one another. And one of my favorite pieces of my Colorado world is drifting away from me. He feels all of the 2,000 miles between us, but it is more than a physical distance now. It is a heart distance that I fear will never be restored. I fear it, even while I think it may be for the best. He is my best friend. We have shared the greatest communication I have ever had with anyone and we walked together through each other’s darkest nights. Because we shared those things, it is impossible for him to leave a place of nearness to my heart; but just as I predicted, his time in my life has been a season and I feel it slowly dying.

I knew this season would change; I knew it was coming. But I also knew our season had not ended when everyone told me it should. I have learned that I must time my own life. I must feel the changes for myself and act accordingly. These are my seasons, not yours. My summer might be shorter than you thought and my fall may stretch out beyond the days you imagined. I pray that my next winter will be short and that spring will come quickly. And maybe we will share a meal or two together in another cycle of our seasons, but it is clear it will not be this one.

And so I feel the melancholy and the hope of Donald Miller’s words, simultaneously.