Change You Can Believe In

I got a letter in the mail from my amazing friend, Tracey the other day. I loved seeing her scrawling handwriting and pretty stationary and feeling like she was with me just for a while, in her words. And what she wrote about really hit me. She told me about how her heart is resistant to change, but how she realizes that we are not static beings, but are constantly changing, little by little into more of ourselves (best case scenario).

I think the thing I have loved the most (while also being the most frustrating) about this job is that it has stretched me and helped me grow. And who I am now astounds me.

And now for a short inventory of 

Things I Used to be Afraid of but am Now OK With: big dogs, cooking, heights, my hair.

(via http://modernhepburn.tumblr.com/ and yours truly)

We’ll focus on just one item from the above list: heights.

I used to be terrified of any notion of being up off the ground unless I was enclosed in an airplane.

 And now I climb 25 foot poles. I walk trails on the edge of a cliff. I stand on top of our climbing tower for hours. I jump off platforms over 100 feet above river beds (shout-out to the impeccable Camp Eagle in Rocksprings, TX!)

 I not only accept challenges but have become that girl that seeks them out. I like to be thrilled, to taste accomplishment on the other side, and don’t care about that fear doing cartwheels in my stomach the whole time.

Because that fear isn’t completely gone. What has changed isn’t that I am some fearless, thrill-seeking maniac, but that I have understood how to work through it. I have grasped that I am capable of so much more than I once thought. I have realized that being challenged helps me grow, and learn, and trust, and live. And living is the way to meet our Maker, because living and choices and people can bring us so much fear but I’ve learned to work it out as I trust in the Lord.