When We Don’t Choose Change…
By: Megan Wilczek
July 4th has easily been my favorite holiday for the past 10 years. It’s low pressure. We don’t need to prepare or buy gifts. We just get to show up and hang out with our kids for the day. When our oldest was 4 years old, we started the tradition of going to the fireworks in a city near us. But we would go early and spend the day roaming the walking paths by the lake, catching crayfish in the stream, and skipping rocks. We would have a picnic on the same quilt every single year. After we had so much fun doing this that first year, I said we need to do this every 4th of July. Every year was a new adventure.
We had several amazing years of this sweet tradition, but then things changed. None of us chose the change. It just happened. Our oldest is 14 now and off at camp for the week of the 4th this year. We have 2 more kids than we did when we started this tradition. Our family dynamic is different. The city changed the day they do fireworks to a day we still had work. Plus, it stormed that night. We ended up going to fireworks in a different city, on a different day. We didn’t spend all day hanging out. We just went for the evening. Now, on the 4th, when we used to go on adventures, I sit here working on my writing with no plans in particular for the rest of the day. I reflect on the memories we made and realize that by nobody’s choosing, it will never be the same.
“Life is like that sometimes. It seems to move along like a river, changing course, carrying us unwillingly down new paths. We can fight to swim against the current, but we will just end up tired and not where we wanted to be anyway.”
Life is like that sometimes. It seems to move along like a river, changing course, carrying us unwillingly down new paths. We can fight to swim against the current, but we will just end up tired and not where we wanted to be anyway. Often, it’s best to go with the flow of life and make new sweet memories in the place where life takes you. Kids grow up. Events change or cease to exist. Friends move. Other people make decisions that you weren’t part of but, unfortunately, affect your life too.
Sometimes it’s God making decisions for your life that are too big for you to fight against. People pass away, leaving just their imprint on this world. Dearly beloved pets lose their lives. Natural disasters happen, wiping precious places out of the world forever. We can’t go back, even if we would give anything to be able to.
It’s okay to grieve what once was. In fact, I would argue that it’s necessary to truly move forward in life. It’s okay to look back with fondness on the memories you made back then. Just don’t get so fully submersed in it that you miss the memories you could be making today. Because someday you will be looking back on this season of life too. Do you want to look back in joy at this season? Or look back in sadness, feeling that this season was lost? Grieve, and find joy when you’re ready. Grief and joy can be held in tension. It doesn’t have to be one or the other.
Now excuse me while I sign off to go find some new memories to make.
Meet the Author
Megan grew up in rural Wisconsin, where she was always known as the quiet girl with a book in her hands. Now Megan is working on her lifelong dream of becoming the author of her very own book. Out of her own struggle with trauma and mental health, she created the Jordan Crossings Blog to empower those who are healing from trauma and educate Christians on how to minister to those who are hurting.
