Reluctant Dragon Slayers
I feared so much walking away from everything that had become how I defined life. Because, by doing that, I would be walking away from what I believed were important plans and my preconceived notions about what it was to be. I guess that’s why God makes it impossible to look back sometimes. When things are broken and can never be whole again, the only thing you can do at times is chuck it and start over.
I was little angry at God for that, but I was also a little excited. Scared-to-death-every-muscle-tense,-ulcer-type excited, but there was excitement in there somewhere. But I also worried that my fear might be bigger than my need to move on. Because, even when something is broken beyond repair and you can never have it again, it is quite possible to merely sit, thinking about how it was and would have been, holding dearly the pieces.
But, thankfully, step by grudging step, I moved into change. New apartment, new job, new loneliness and plenty of old baggage. I moved because it was the only viable solution. It was the only thing that made sense. (Not that I’m known for always making the sensible, logical choice, but sometimes…) Maybe, I told myself, there’s something better.
Since then, I’ve thought a lot about change. Maybe change is God preparing us for something better. Maybe that’s what change is all about. Maybe we wander through the underbrush of the unknown, scratched and scraped by senseless limbs and hidden thorns and cowering at every unknown sound, eventually to find a sort of promised land in the clearing. Perhaps there are such things as those new beginnings and fresh starts I’ve heard so much about. Or, maybe, the thorns and tightly gathered brushwood are all there are to this life.
I guess that’s the greatest obstacle to our desire to move on: at least we know the devil that torments us; at least we know what tortures and misadventures and even small joys to expect in the place we are, even if we are ultimately unhappy, it is what we know, and how we have defined living. And so the chance that what awaits us might be worse somehow plants us firmly where we are. Also, the fear that we don’t deserve, and will never get, anything better than what we have tends to overtake us. So, in the end, we pull the covers up over our heads, roll over and leave any ideas of something different to our dreams.
But, I fear that this isn’t living, this battling our dragons, but never disposing of them so that we will never feel without purpose (but will always be thought heroic). When what we have defined as our purpose is gone, all that is left for us is to find new purpose and new adventures to live, and that is far more frightening than any dragon.
Change is one of the worst inventions ever, but I lose my purpose when I avoid it. I become less than what God intended if I don’t move with him, letting him tend my wounds as we go. So, I’ve decided that if there’s not something better beyond the now, I will still trust God. When he gently nudges me to move again, I will gather my things, or if there is no time, pull only my coat tightly around me, and take my leave. To be honest, I’m sinful, and if he was just powerful, I might not go. If he was just my Creator, I might make up many good excuses to stay. But, I go also because he loves me, and love does no evil to the beloved.
-Chad
7:17:49 PM 
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