I will be honest with you; I don’t like change.

I will never forget the moment my dad told me that we were moving to England just before my Senior Year in Highschool. I felt genuine grief as yearbook moments I had dreamed about were erased with one conversation. It physically hurt.

And I remember, after a wedding day filled with cake and laughter, getting in the car with my new husband. At that moment, the reality of the situation dawned on my four-year-old sister and she broke down in tears. It dawned on me too and I sobbed all the way to our Paris hotel.

The summer before my oldest daughter went to ‘big school’ was awful. The last few days of August became a kind of tortured count down as I anticipated this unwelcomed milestone and privately grieved into my pillow each night. Even now, the shortening days of late summer remind me of that dreaded back-to-school feeling when carefree summer fun ends and routine returns. It still makes me feel sad.

Last September I had the ultimate back-to-school moment when my youngest skipped off to uni. I won’t lie to you; it ripped a little hole in my soul.

And of course, there are the weddings. The first was a year ago, the second will be in April. When your daughter gets married, you laugh and cry and dance till late and then you wake up the next morning with the weirdest mix of both joy and loss. I don’t think there is any other moment in life as bittersweet.

But the Bible is always honest with me. It tells me that there are no predictable human experiences on Planet Earth. Life moves on and it changes all the time.

Seasons come and go, both metaphorically and meteorologically. It can’t always be summer, even if we wish it could. Autumn arrives, so does winter, and then spring sneaks up on you again. Joyous moments come and then they fade away like summer roses. Often there are miracles, hopeless situations that turn on a dime. Sometimes there are seasons of seemingly endless disappointments.

Family life ebbs and flows with beginnings and endings, new ventures and unplanned good-byes. There are gains and losses. There are twists in the road we didn’t bargain for and opportunities we couldn’t have dreamed of.

And all the time God is unchanging, unflinching and utterly unmoved. 

He does not change.

He is the rock I stand on. His love and goodness are the foundation underneath what often feels like shifting sand. They are the only guarantee in the midst of the flux and flow of this life.

He is the constant in the variables that sometimes shake me. He is the only safe place I can hide. He is faithful and good and He can always be trusted.

He is where I go when change scares me and when blessings humble me. He is where I go when I don’t understand. He is the answer to every question and the comfort for every mixed emotion. He is where I start when the day is fresh and full of potential and where I finish when the day is over and things didn’t work out as planned.

He is God.  He is for me.  His mercies are new every morning. His love and character are unchanging. 

He is who He says He is; He will do what He has promised.

Today that is all I need to know.