People are always telling you that change is a good thing. But all they're really saying is that something you didn't want to happen at all... has happened.

This last month has flown by and many things have come and gone without a moment to process them on the blog unfortunately. One thought has been there through the busyness of fall-change. 
I have not been a fan of change. Well, I have not liked perceived negative change. But come on, who has?  

Living this international life has brought on a level of more frequent change than I had expected. I've had to say goodbye to so many sweet people in less than three years overseas.
It's getting to be that time of year when the question is asked about the following year and our intentions for it. I have never felt ready to answer that question in October, but it's a necessary question for international education. All the details to be figured out. 

I have viewed change as a necessary evil at many times in life. At the end of my sophomore year of high school, I expected to finish out my secondary career in one school. God had other plans, moving my family to a vastly different school in the same town.  I had a wonderful last two years of high school with experiences and challenges I would not have had at the first school. (Come to think of it, had I NOT changed schools that year, I could have missed my connection to NICS and not be in Korea right now. Interesting...) 
I did not handle that major change in my life well. I begged God for it not to happen, even having a one-sided argument with him whilst roaming about Kroger one night. God's will was done; so many good things came into my life because of His plan for me and my family at a different school than the one we'd been at for so long. 

Other changes in life have come and gone but none so poignant in my life as that one. I look back on it and see how God used that for so much good. That change that I despised at the beginning has brought so much good. 
So change can be good.

The wonderful season of autumn is upon us here in Korea, and I am loving seeing the foliage as well as taking pictures of it. Seeing pictures of the changing leaves from Arkansas is quite the delight of checking facebook these days too. 
With a heavy heart full of thoughts of change, I headed to the subway station today to meet a friend for a Seoul excursion. I had enough time to enjoy some fall scenes on the way when the connection hit me. 
I look forward to fall all summer and to seeing God's handiwork in creation even in the dying leaves. I look forward to that CHANGE. Every year there is a reminder that change happens and we can't stop it. The one consolation trumping all the excuses I might make for the changes is that our GOD does not. 
A student asked me this week why God would make a world that does change when He does not. (Pretty deep question for a third grader!) All I could think of what that it was a good reminder to us on a daily basis that He does not. We can trust Him. He is the Great I Am, never the Great I was. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever.