This is the first week of the Fall season. It doesn’t feel like it, but welcome to Texas. Eventually, the air will become crisper, and leaves will begin to change … and then they will fall.
The interesting thing is that even though the leaves do fall at this time of the year, they don’t do so willingly. The whole process of leaf drop is a form of self-protection for the tree. Most leaves lose their photosynthesis capability during winter temps, so they become useless to the tree. So, the tree actually starves the leaf by forming a layer of cells between the leaf stalk and the twig holding it on. The leaf is slowly cut from the tree without leaving an open wound.
Change can be hard. But it is sometimes necessary and many times it is for self-protection. Many of the men and women that come to our shelters will later say something like, “If I hadn’t changed when I did, I might not be alive today.” It’s true. Change is hard. But sometimes, staying the same is harder.
Most of the time, when we think of change, we think of letting go of something. And, unlike the tree, change sometimes produces wounds. It can feel like an amputation because those areas that need to change have become a very real part of our being. But when it becomes evident that things can’t stay the same, there has to come a shift in our thinking.
Author, Tony Robbins put it this way, “Change happens when the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of change.”
“I thought I had it all together,” is what Jason told me. “Everybody else just needed to change the way they were treating me. Boy was I wrong.” He went on to say, “It wasn’t until they cut me off completely that I realized that something needed to change … and that something was me. Staying the same wasn’t an option. Was it easy? No! But it got easier with God’s help and my brothers around me at Faith Mission.”
What Jason realized is that something has to fall before something new can grow back. That’s called change and it is hard.
