Learning To Sit With Forced Changes
5 MINUTE READ
Stephanie Chizoba Odili
May 14, 2024
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"God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth gives way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging."
Psalm 46:1-3 (NIV).
"Forced change" refers to a situation where something has to be different, even if you didn't really want it to be. For younger people, it's like when you have to switch schools or move to a new house because your parents got a new job. For an adult like me, it has ranged from bellicosely moving out from a parents house to losing best friends, familiar jobs, close family members, sentimental homes, and eventually toxic marriages. You didn't choose the change or the sudden need to adapt, yet you have to adjust to the new situation.
When looking at your life, you ask two questions:
- Am I where I want to be?
- Have I been moved to where I ought to be?
The first question is life on a planned, achieving trajectory while the second is the outlook that comes from a forced change; a healed, yet forced change.
Being where you want to be is good. You create the image of your desired future and map out the journey to that destination. Though with its own ups and downs, this path is successful.
Being moved to where you ought to be, for those who know, is not initially pretty. Some of the characteristics of that are:
- Wrongly assuming where you want to be.
- Having a wrong idea of who you are.
- No longer noticing change or its chimes.
- Your life being dictated and activated by everyone and everything but you.
- Your life is neither for self or to God.
- Failure to see that perhaps, what you thought you knew or wanted isn't what's best for you.
If you, like me, are a chosen of our Lord, He will orchestrate your forced change. Now, I say God because though it seems hard at the moment, He knows best what you need and who you need/ought to become to be where you want to be. If you are a person of yourself (though not in control regardless), your forced change will creep in suddenly, then all at once tear you away from the comfortable fence you sat on.
To change is already daunting, but to have it forced upon you is a whole other conversation. As a functional adult with the intention and desire to come out of the rut, know this- that in the chaos of forced changes, we discover our capacity to adapt, we mould resilience into hope, we use wisdom to navigate the storms and we sculpt our destinies by the help of God.
So, what next?
- Look at your life again, and identify where in the above two questions you fit.
- If you are where you want to be, give God the glory and keep it pushing.
- If you are not, then you are about to be moved to where you ought to be. I suggest that you now, together with God, take charge of your life and realise you are in a transit location, that way you can transition well.
- Itemise the changes you need to make, before it is forced upon you; then get to it.
- If you are already in the middle of a forced change it's okay. List out what it looks like for you.
- Breathe.
- Embrace the moment and the reality of it. In fact, I dare you to be thankful that you have realised you are in a forced change, that means you are in the process of moving to where you ought to be.
- Trust.
- Your atmosphere is a magnet, so be around people and be in places that do not make an already unexpected reality even more difficult.
I part you with some words that have helped me as I move through the numerous forced changes in my life. Embrace the winds of change, for they often carry the seeds of opportunity. Surround yourself with a support system that understands the acquired taste of adaptability and patience. Sit with this forced change; be thankful and hopeful. Find a way to celebrate it, allow it, then learn from it. That is the power of this season.