Persevering Paige

“Well, change is a part of life, Paige.” The very sentence that pierces my heart each time I try to open up and speak to someone about how difficult change is for me. Whether it’s involving something big, or something small, change is hard for me. Of course the drastic changes are the hardest but small things get me, too.

Change has always been difficult for me, but in recent years I have learned the extent. Of course, you want to ask “Why?” “Why is this so hard for me?” “If change is a normal part of life, why do I have so much difficult with it?” The truth is there could be a variety of reasons why change is hard for me, and I have thought about all of them. It may not even be one of those reasons, it could be a combination of many of those things. Either way, it is important to remember that change is hard for everyone, it might just be a little harder for me.

I grapple a lot with the fact that one day, my stepdad is going to sell my mom’s house. My heart stings every time he reminds me. I know, it’s just a house. It means a lot more to me though, because this house is the last house she ever lived in, and I can still feel her here. I can still walk down the stairs and imagine her carrying a laundry basket down them on a Sunday afternoon with her hair halfway up in her clip. Her things are placed all around me, most of them still in their original places, set there by her. I know selling the house wouldn’t just mean selling her last home, it would mean getting rid of and selling a lot of her belongings too. Things that after my siblings and I decide on who gets what, we simply won’t have room for all of it.

I have come to learn that we don’t fear change itself, we fear what that change brings. We fear the sadness, we fear a loss of something else. In a sense, I do feel that in selling this home, I would be losing a part of my Mom-the only physical tangible part left of her, and I just don’t know if I could do it. Sometimes I think that it would break me, that I would start the grieving process all over again.

I wish I was writing this to tell you: here’s what to do if you feel like this, too. Here is the answer. Instead, I am telling you: here is how I feel in my experience, and here is what I think we can shift our focus to.

The selling of my Mom’s house would not be for a couple more years, until my brother graduates high school. By that time, who knows where I will be. Either way, it will be hard. But for me, it helps me to realize that if I can make it through moving out of my first house, the only house where both of my parents lived together with us, then I can get through this. It also helps me to remember that I feel my Mom many times throughout my daily life, it is not exclusive to in this home.

To reiterate, I don’t have the answers, I am just a 21-year-old girl rambling. I have determined that in my situation, this particular change boils down to 2 H’s: Helpful and Hard. I feel so blessed that my stepdad was able to keep this house for so long after my Mom passed away, allowing us to see it out for many more years, holidays, and milestones. But at the same time, keeping this house has also been hard, because I do see so much of my Mom in it. I think in every change, we can see there are two angles, the sad and the happy, the helpful and the hard, the good and the bad. For me, the reason change is so hard for me, is because usually change has been associated with negatives. You know, someone dying, a loss of something else. I think that most of the reason that change is difficult for me is due to how I feel things so deeply. The good news?

God made me who I am, and he loves all of it, even the parts that make my life harder. He made me the woman who feels. I pray he gives me the courage and the strength to embrace what He allows me to feel so deeply. Lord, give me the strength to feel your love overpower my fear of finding the pain in change. Lord, allow me to feel your love more than I feel or think of anything else.