Change

Change.  What a word.  It describes my life.  My house.  My job.  My friends.  A blessing, yet how it makes ache come.  I remember this past week with a mixture of emotion.  There were many lasts, a few firsts, but many lasts.  Those lasts, I treasure.  There only a few to be mentioned here.  There was the last time I slept in the room that I've had since I moved here last January.  There was the last time being in that room with a room mate, something that I had gotten used to.  There was the last time doing laundry in our good old laundry room.  The last time having someone go through both doors in my room, just passing through.  The last time.  Some days the lasts can be so overwhelming, too filled with heavy.  Grace blessed by giving me a weekend to, in some ways, forget the lasts.  A weekend filled with laughter, sunshine, good food.  Yet, coming back to the house, I was overcome by the reality that once again my life is about to be changed drastically.  My heart rebelled at the very thought that once again I had to give up more and let more change in.  Tears came angry.  Yet, it's as if they almost refused to fall, for fear that no one, not even me would understand them.  Fear that condemnation would fall.  Fear that grace would no longer be.  Fear that nothing could ever be normal again.  Then again, crazy grace flowed in the next few days at work.  And a quote made my mind reel.  "All fear is the notion that the love of God ends." (Ann Voskamp).  Fear of change.  Fear of rejection.  Fear of man.  Fear of the future.  Fear of being forgotten.  Fear of being unworthy.  All fear.  When we fear, we let Satan make us believe that God's love isn't sufficient, that it ends instead of being never-ending.  And, if God is love, but we believe that God's love ends, then we're believing that God ends.  That He isn't capable to love, that He, in essence, isn't.  We would never actually stop to think that way, but if you pick fear apart, it, does in a way become just what I've written. 

"Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.  Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.  In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent His only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.  In this is love, not that we have loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.  Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.  No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and His love is perfected in us.  By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit.  And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent His Son to be the Savior of the world.  Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God.  So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us.  God is love and whoever abides in love, abides in God and God abides in him.  By this is love perfected in us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgement, because as He is so also are we in this world.  There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.  For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love.  We love because He first loved us. "
1 John 4:7-19

Isn't that crazy?  Perfect love casts out fear.  If Love, who created the mountains so massive, can cause them to crumble in seconds, Love can break the chains of fear.