the change craving

Change is strange. I’ll admit I am not change’s number one fan, and I have actually spent a lot of my life fearing it, holding tightly to everything. What I can control I can also contain, and I’ve often felt as though if I let things go or shape shift, they would become all at once unmanageable, maybe even just bad altogether. But I suppose if I really spend time thinking about it, every marker of big change in my life has come with a lesson in God’s faithfulness, every time I released my grip on what was in my tightly-clenched fists I’ve found more faith and provision than I could hold onto. 

Something in me, perhaps spurred by the newness of the year and of the decade, has been craving change. I’ve never cut my hair. I mean, I’ve trimmed it, but I’ve had the same long brown curls for as long as I can remember. But something came over me a few weeks ago in the middle of the night, craving change. Before I knew it, I was down the Pinterest rabbit hole looking at short hairstyles and trying to figure out what I could do that would feel drastic, different. 

I got it cut, and at first, it wasn’t short enough. I looked in the mirror, swept my hair up into a ponytail, and felt…the same. I asked her to cut more, and the hairdresser looked at me with her eyebrows raised, having known me nearly my entire life (see? I can’t even change hairdressers) and asked me if I was sure. I spent a half hour going back and forth before telling her that I was in fact sure, and she cut the rest off, totaling in the end to be almost 6 inches. 

With less hair and less inhibition, I started my last semester of undergrad on Monday. College, while I will have completed NYU in three years, has been a five year ordeal. I deferred for two years to pursue acting and travel and figure out more about what I wanted before finally moving across the country. I could tell you all the crazy things that put me so in awe of why it had to have been predestined that I move to the city no earlier and no later than I did (stories for another time), but it has been both a wild ride and a slow, static shift in my soul over the past few years here. So for it to finally be wrapping up, to finally be in the homestretch of this journey, on the precipice of the working world, feels surreal. There is a lot happening in the next few months, the defense of my major, the [hopeful] securing of a post-grad job, the managing of our now official non-profit. Change is coming at me full force, and I am getting ready for impact. 

Some change happens all at once, the swiftness of a haircut, the suddenness of a breakup. Some change we see coming in slow motion, and other change hits us from out of nowhere. And while some change is fast, some change is actually rather slow, static even. The things in me now, the knowledge I’ve acquired, the rhythms I operate in, they were all learned overtime. Sometimes by accident, and sometimes with due diligence. Some change is the direct result of a decision to operate in a different way - this is perhaps the most lasting of changes. I also think change always has the prospect for transformation, it’s just a matter of if we let it transform us. 

And so, as I march into this year, fraught with thoughts about all that is to come, I do so knowing that “yes” is an act of faith, and that every change we encounter has been mapped out by  cartographer who knows us inside and out. Here’s to the new year.