The First Step to Making Any Change

Change is happening here.

I have been writing about Seeking God’s Truth about Body Image for a year and a half. Crafting these stories has empowered me to believe something new.

I was meant to write.

I know this because when I am not writing, I’m not myself.

Myself is this girl with whom I’ve become more intimately acquainted over the last few years. After having spent some real time with her lately, I believe I’m starting to like her.

Sometimes she laughs for too long, and recently, her loud cackle has interrupted a few too many polite conversations at quiet restaurant tables.  She is starting to let some of her mistakes go without so much guilt attached, which is why she is laughing more.  Experiencing joy more.  This girl.

As I consider the change that is happening here, I remember the people who have changed me.  One of the most influential people in my growing-into-womanhood life was my sophomore English teacher.

He is a writer and truth-teller.  He used to call me “son,” and I would get angry with him for calling me a boy.  “Why are you calling me son?” I asked repeatedly until, one day, he challenged me to listen to the word.

“You’re thinking of the word all wrong. Why would you ever get mad at me for calling you ‘sun’?” he asked.

For so long, I did not hear the life-giving words he was speaking to me.  But in his teaching me how to listen for meaning, he taught me how to change the way I think and love.

By his life, he taught me how to craft words into sentences that prick the imagination.  He showed me how words have power to change peoples’ hearts. He gifted me words that beheld the beauty of Jesus, and he challenged me to believe in the words that love people. And that belief has forever changed me.

But how do I make a change in my practical life based on the change that the Lord has done in me? What is the first step in making any change in my life? What is the first step for any of us desiring to make any change in our lives?

The first step to making any change is speaking our desires to Our Creator.

Before praying for His gentle guiding, before begging for His merciful hand to hold me in the unknown, before telling myself that “I could never do….,” I have learned that I must come to him honestly, transparently, desperately.

And that is what I have done.  I have been sharing my desires with Him.  Lord, will you open the doors for me to write? Will you give me purposeful words that love people in a new way?

I have travelled some distance to arrive here.  In this place I currently stand, I trust and wait — present and imperfect and completely hopeful. I’m going to try, with everything I’ve got, to craft the words that have been stirring my soul. Starting this weekend, I’m penning my first book proposal.

But because I’m a limited human being and admitting God really intended for me to live that way, I’m choosing to write less frequently here. So there will be an exchange, the book work in exchange for the blog work.

Please sign up to receive the monthly posts; the inquiry is all the way at the bottom of your screen! The book work will generate reader-worthy posts, and I plan to publish here monthly instead of weekly. Thank you for walking alongside me as I drop a monthly note in your inbox.

This process will bring change and humility, most certain.  But I pray the result will bring “praise and glory and honor” to my Jesus (1 Peter 1:7).