I almost crashed into the guardrail. This wasn’t just any regular rain. I was slipping and sliding down the road under dark gray skies and an extreme downpour, driving all the way across town to pick up a betrayal. I had made this drive more than a hundred times in better weather, but I’ll never forget that day. I didn’t know then, as I tried to maintain control of the wheel, that I’d soon be trying to regain control of much more. I was headed for a conversation that would cause everything to suddenly become unstable: my mind, my livelihood, my friendships, my comfortable place in life.

That was almost two years ago. A lot has unraveled since then, but some pain, questions, and people will probably always linger in the in-between. What hasn’t changed is my resistance to change itself, which I’m consistent in opposing even though its constant presence has been proven many times over. Sometimes it’s been a friend, and I’m working on forgiving it for the other times. No matter what, it’ll still be coming around the corner to pick me up on its own schedule, not bothering to check mine in the least. Constant.

I’m a regular on this “up-down-here-there-together-broken-sustained-needing” rollercoaster and I’ve watched my loved ones ride this ride, too. It can throw us for a loop sometimes but eventually, we get a grip. The ups and downs one day become memories; some of mine I now see as necessary parts, and some I still don’t understand but trust they must be necessary. In books I’ve read, I wondered why the author chose to include certain details but then I get a few chapters further and I understand. As the years go by, I’m starting to understand why the Author of my life chooses to give and take away. He’s writing a story where the details will come together at the end for purposes beyond me, and probably not the way I would’ve written it. I revisit the scenes of change looking for lessons. I’m still watching new ones play out.

*

All I wanted to do was go to book club that weekend and get on with my life, but I knew it was probably a bad idea to start reading a book about a couple. Sure enough, around page 50, I saw his name. One of the characters shared this name with him, a name that would’ve meant nothing to me a few months prior. Now my life and my camera roll are invisibly split between before I met him and after. Weeks are passing and our lives are inching on, strangely but surely. I’m trying to keep busy with reading again but my mind is only halfway into the story; the rest of it is mulling over what was right and what went wrong, as if he can hear my heart from his place on the other side of the city.

*

Heartbreak is humbling. Every time I’ve been met with it, something or someone changed that I thought wouldn’t or couldn’t. I’ve mostly accepted that change is inevitable and not always negative, but I sure hold things a lot more loosely. I often haven’t been given a choice whether to let things go—they just went. The season changed. The scene is over. I count on the abundance of blank pages after every scene ends and the morning joy that peeks through after dark nights. All things are working together for a good that I can never see in the moment, but I believe it. I have to.

There’s a clear marker in my mind between every wave of change that blew through my life and what was left in its wake. Sometimes I still see life as pre-breakup and post-breakup, before that job ended and after that job ended, the recklessness of life before Christ and the lingering effects, when I still had that friend and when I no longer did, and on and on. But that’s one complicated quality of grief—it begs for contemplation.

*

If you had told me that I would see these people again with a few years and a few hard times between us and that we’d all be living in different states with different jobs, I would’ve said it couldn’t be true. It would seem far-fetched that anything could threaten our comfortable arrangement. I would never believe that anyone would turn on us. We were in it for the long haul, and I couldn’t envision a reality where the long haul doesn’t happen. I didn’t know they’d one day be on the other side of the country, on the other side of the split between before I walked through the doors of that church and after I couldn’t even bear driving past the building anymore. After I had specific instructions from a licensed professional not to drive past that building anymore.

*

I’m reluctantly learning to dance with this limbo, this pain, uncertainty, and renewal. The most important step is learning, followed by letting go. Right can show up where wrong has been standing and we all have to move on—up, down, to the side, or even to a different state. Much less of what we think is permanent about our lives or the lives of others actually is.

In the story of our lives, this is the twist that keeps catching me off guard: the changes never stop happening. The chapters never stop closing. The cliché has proven true: many beautiful new beginnings have been birthed from awful endings (and there are more beginnings, endings, and awful things where those came from). But one thing has proven true and hasn’t shifted once: God’s promises—which do not include a job, a relationship, or anything else I’ve lost. God’s righteous choices to withhold standing in perfect union with His power to act. God’s steady character showing in my unsteady life.

*

Facebook Memories have mostly existed for my embarrassment and horror. But right now, they exist for my reflection and comfort. When the status updates from 2009 appear, I think, “WHAT was I going through ten years ago? Which job was causing me so much stress? Which man had broken my heart that time?” This 18-year-old version of me had no idea that she’d survive whatever it was. She thought she was a goner. But all these years later, she wouldn’t even remember his last name. Her life would be surrendered to a Savior who would meet the greatest need that the sad song lyrics, subliminal messages, and out of context Bible verses of her Facebook statuses hinted at.

*

By reckoning with change, I allow myself to see it up close. To recognize the pain in it and smile at the unbelievable grace. Sometimes I’m hit with a random wave of sadness and disbelief that things unfolded the way they did. Sometimes a forceful realization comes that they’ll never be the same again. And sometimes, if I stand still long enough and look the changes directly in the eye, I get an epiphany about the chain reaction that each one caused in my life.

By the time I work up the nerve to publish what I’ve learned about it (many months later, it turns out), we’ll have been back together and once again apart, and I’ll have been reminded (yet again) how fleeting a concept “job security” is. I’ll have seen change peep through life’s door and watched helplessly as it broke it down. Again.

I’m reading Bittersweet by Shauna Niequist right now, and that word “bittersweet” perfectly sums up the way I’ve come to view change. She writes, “Change can push us, pull us, rebuke and remake us. It can show us who we’ve become, in the worst ways, and also in the best ways. I’ve learned that it’s not something to run away from, as though we could, and…in many cases, change is not a function of life’s cruelty but instead a function of God’s graciousness.”

*

This time I’m on unfamiliar streets, once more driving slowly through heavy rain. I’m trying to smile because I feel a cry coming on. I thought letting “Not For A Moment” by Meredith Andrews play while my emotions were raw was a good idea. It wasn’t. My windshield was barely visible and then there were the tears, bursting through from a grateful heart in disbelief.

It didn’t seem real that this was life now, this was my new routine, and these were the new streets I’d be driving on. It was overwhelming to think that I was on my way to a job I didn’t have a few months ago. I remembered being curled over on my couch begging God for one. The weight of my bleak reality and grief pushed me down then, and this tangible display of God’s kindness pushed me through now. I have seen how beautiful change can be in sovereign, holy hands—even when it hurts on the front end and might still sting in places years from now. I have seen how quickly (my goodness, how quickly!) circumstances—people, places, things—can change, for better or worse. Somehow this makes me sad and gives me hope at the same time.