How Quickly Everything Can Change

Kylie Dulo
Jan 10, 2022
7 min read

It has always amazed me how quickly everything can change and how little control we have over it.

Zechariah 13:9

And I will put this third into the fire, and refine them as one refines silver, and test them as gold is tested. They will call upon my name, and I will answer them. I will say, ‘They are my people’; and they will say, ‘The Lord is my God.’

Controlling Change

When dealing with someone who want to control or change their lives, counselors will often give the advice “Just control what you are able to control and give the rest to God”. I can’t tell you how hard this makes me laugh internally every time I hear it.

To think we can control really any aspect of our lives is, well, can I just say “the audacity!” So many of us experienced how fragile our lives are both physically and mentally when we contracted COVID-19. Just like that we went from highly-effective leaders and task killers to Flat. On. Our. Backs.

Did you have any control over that? I know I didn’t when I lay in bed for two whole weeks drinking cough medicine straight from the bottle and willing myself to just get over it. But I couldn’t. I had zero real control over how quickly I could recover. I was humbled and grateful when the brain fog finally dissipated three weeks later. I thanked God because I knew it wasn’t anything I did myself.

Sure, if you forget your lunch or rear-end another car, that on you. But when we talk about controlling change in our lives we usually refer to the bigger rocks, the things that are not just change in our lives but that would change our lives.

Have you ever thought of what a blessing it is that we are not in control?!

Seriously, I thank God that I am not in control of my life. When I start to get stressed about the big rocks of my life and not knowing how they will work out, it is more reassuring to me to remember that if God wanted to whole thing to fall apart, he would have already let go of the strings that hold it all together.

Jeremiah 29:11

Handling Change

When my Christmas tree caught on fire two years ago today on January 11, 2020 and burned the majority of our house and personal belongings to a crisp, I can tell you I wish I could have controlled that; and I wish I could have known how to handle it.

There are changes in our lives that happen so fast they shake us to the core. How do we handle that? Here’s a few things that helped me two years ago and ever since:

1. I’m not in control, THANK GOD!

2. I don’t understand the change, but I can trust God.

3. This isn’t forever; it’s a season that will pass.

4. I can still see God’s reassuring hand in my life when I look for Him.

What was the change you had to learn to handle?

Expecting Change

After we stop trying to control changes in our lives and we learn to handle the change, we can start to expect change.

Life is full of changes. Some are more expected than others, and some come so fast we stand speechless for months.

While we can never know “what” the change will be, we can expect that God has a change in mind for us. It is hard to expect the “big rock” changes.

These changing often happen out of the blue for good or bad.

-Your parent took a turn for the worse and needs to move in.

-You’ve been single for longer than you’d like, but within one month of

meeting and godly counsel you believe you truly found your spouse!

-Your most servant-hearted church member found out their job is transferring them to a different state and you now need to fill three different ministry leadership positions.

-The church building you’ve been praying for was just paid for by a generous, anonymous donor!

-Your medical tests came back with life altering results.

-You thought you could never have children and then find out you or your spouse is pregnant!

As we learn more and more of God’s nature, we begin to deeply understand that He does not want us to stay the same. He wants us to grow spiritually, become more loving spouses, parent our children with more patience, and serve him in the ministry he has called each of us to as Christians with more faith every day. But the only way to be better every day is by changing. If we aren’t expecting change in our personal lives, then we are just coasting.

Appreciating Change

God uses change in our life to grow us and sometimes to wake us up spiritually.

The months leading up to the 2020 fire were full of change. In 2019, I had an insane amount of change happen in my life all at the same time. Too much to go into detail, but one major change was moving with my husband to the Pacific North West. Previously, I had only ever lived in sunny places: Florida, California, and Las Vegas. So the overcast weather did not agree with me. Even though I had heard of and been warned about seasonal depression, I never thought I could be a candidate.

The weather along with the many other changes I referred to, put me in a slump of depression of which I did not think my personality capable. For 10 months I deeply struggled. I had always handled change so well and had even been excited about this move! But this mountain of change buried me, and I felt like I couldn’t breath.

I did what probably any Christian does when dealing with depression. I laid in bed for a while, cried, prayed, talked to my spouse about it, didn’t really share with anyone else because, you know, we don’t do that (unfortunately). I felt like I was making some real progress after starting to get back in the gym and finding a new church home. But as anyone who has struggled like this knows, a little depression is still depression. While I was doing better, I couldn’t quite shake it.

And then the fire happened.

You know how God says He is a “refining fire” in our lives? Zach.13:9

Well, I never took that literally before. But you know what? I am now thankful for that fire.

As terrifying, and horrible, and awful, and how much I would never wish the experience on any other human, it was just what I needed. God used a literally fire in my life to wake me up and help me shake my depression for good.

Going through a near-death experience usually forces a new perspective; and that’s what happened for me. I couldn’t help but see God’s grace in every aspect of life. My very good friend is a fire fighter in California. Based on my proximity to the initial blast when the tree ignited and the burns on my face, she and her crew couldn’t believe that I was not dead from inhaling burning smoke. I should have been.

After the whirlwind of picking through what remained of our belongings and very quickly finding a new place to live, I was literally surrounded by newness. A new house, new couch, new picture frames, new neighbors, and I felt new inside as well.

The weeks of processing and healing from the fire just solidified in my mind that I needed to “start over”. I am sure God could have woken me up through less dramatic and less damaging methods. And I can now see that God accomplished more through that change than just waking me up. But after two years of processing this change, I can truly say that I appreciate it.

Is there a change God made in your life that you can’t appreciate yet?

I wouldn’t blame you. It’s taken a couple years of processing for me to get here. But the process to appreciating change, while challenging, can also be the most rewarding.

CONCLUSION

I wrote a poem on this topic a few years ago (see below). It talks about how, for good or for bad, our entire lives can shift in a direction we never saw coming; and yet God is there through it all.

For me, whenever, the clouds come around again, literal or symbolic clouds, I can now look back at every change God made through the house fire. I am more equipped to “handle” new change now.

I pray we can all see how it all comes full circle- He allows change to we can let go of control- so we can learn to handle change by trusting Him- so we can expect him to continue growing us through change- so we can appreciate the change we already had- and probably because we never really nail this down, start over.

Zechariah 13:9, 1 Peter 1:7, Isaiah 48:10, Malachi 3:3, Job 23:10, Proverbs 17:3, Romans, 8:28, 1 Peter 4:12-5:10

How quickly everything can change.

Here in this world and in my life I see consistency.

The sun comes up and then goes down right here in front of me.

I see the stars, witness the moon each twinkling with glee.

Of all the things I see coming, there's one I can't foresee.

And that is,