Change

I see change all around me.

I see it in the blue of the sky and the heat rising up from the pavement. I see it in the feathers sprouting from the baby ducks at the pond. I see it in the strollers that the mothers push down the sidewalk, the face of a baby that's growing up all too fast, the laugh of a toddler that already knows too much about life, stay young, don't change, don't grow up.

I see it in the calendar pages, turned over each day almost mechanically, as life ticks on. I see it in the ring on my finger and the date on the wall, realizing it's been almost six months and wondering where the time went. I see it in the hole in my favorite jeans, the box of clothes for DI, the bricks of the high school I haven't stepped foot in for over four years. I see it in the face of a tall missionary who shouldn't be old enough to go, let alone to be soon coming home. I see it in the wedding announcements, the graduation announcements, the new baby announcements, and the obituaries. I hear it in the music on the radio and smell it in a coat of fresh paint and feel it in the rocks under my feet where there once was grass.

I see change whirling all around me, snatching familiarity and wafting it away, dangling it just past my fingertips before it disappears forever. I close my eyes and picture my life and open them and watch it change. I plead for it to just slow down, to let me rest and enjoy the comfortable, familiar moments for just a second longer, but change hurries on and I am left to find new familiarity in whatever follows in its wake.

And so I hold the hand of the one who will never leave and I watch change as it sweeps past, changing life, changing everything, changing us.



Viva la Vida.