If you’ve read some of my earlier posts you know I like to draw inspiration from songs a good deal. One of my favorites is “I Lived.” It’s one of those songs that doesn’t even have to be sung to sound good, you could just say it like a poem.

Hope when you take that jump you won’t feel the fall,

Hope when the water rises you built a wall,

Hope when the crowd screams out they’re screaming your name,

Hope if everybody runs you’ll choose to stay.

This song is about what really matters in life. It was written by one guy for his son.

So, personal tidbit: My family is moving.

That’s hardly unusual, but it has been a wild ride for us.

To begin with, we had no idea where we were moving to; then we found a place, but we kept getting put off about signing for it, and then we were told it wouldn’t be ready by the deadline by which we had to be out of our house. On top of this, a friend of ours offered to pay for our rent so we could stay in our home if we housed some friends of his, but then we couldn’t contact the landlord for two days, and our friend changed the deal. The landlord is also raising the rent by two hundred dollars. After this, our friend never got back to us, even though we gave him an ultimatum. Now we have no place to go except our grandmother’s house, unless by some miracle we find somewhere else before Monday.

I’m sure you’ve had situations like this in your life. You can imagine the stress of not knowing anything for certain for over a month and a half and for going two weeks planning to move without having anywhere to move to. Then we get our hopes up and it’s dashed to pieces. I think we all can agree this sucks.

And of course I’m still getting used to the idea. But I keep thinking of that song and the line about staying. I thought staying meant staying in our house and sticking it out. But Then I realized that staying can mean a lot of things. “Staying power” can mean a steadying hand to help others be calm or resolved, it can mean a firmness that enables you to stick it out through the tough times. Or it can mean simply being there for someone when most people would be too wrapped up in their own troubles to spare any time. As the oldest of three, and three homeschooled kids, I’ve always been close to my sisters, but as we get older we get even closer; I think it’s because we don’t have anyone else to rely on outside the family.

If we didn’t all have our faith I cannot imagine the state we’d been in; at least it gives us something we can all agree to turn to. Although faith does come before family, it is much better to have your family believe with you.

I think God is the one who gives you staying power. He promises to never leave. And we’d hoped he’d let us keep our house, but he never promised that, so no one can say we’ve been misled. It really comes down to whether we’ll accept the change or not.

And I think whether you believe in God or not, or whether or not you’re a Christian, you can agree with me that change is inevitable, and a lot depends on how you choose to handle it.

A lot of people decide to hide from it, to withdraw, or to run from it. Still others make it more difficult by fighting with the people around them, or fighting the change itself. Some people never relinquish the old things and spend their time looking back to what they had and wishing they’d never lost it. I have been tempted to do all those things. But that’s just not the way to handle change. As painful as it is to embrace it, what else can we do? Facing the change and choosing to let it happen, and to look for the best in it; that’s not the easy thing to do, but I think it’s the only way if we want to grow.

Those are my thoughts for the day. Until next post–Natasha