My Journey with Anxiety: Meeting new people (PART 4)

You may or may not know this, but I moved out for the first time a little over three months ago. I moved to a new city and basically had to completely restructure my life. A new church, new friends, new roommates, new job, new rhythms, new city. Half of those I am still working on; the others kind of got thrown at me and thankfully have stuck well. I experienced a lot of growth just before and when I moved. Moving honestly felt so right because everything else in my life felt like it was changing, so why not just add a few more changes to the mix? *silently cries because change is hard* 

It has been mostly good and the growth that I have seen in myself since moving here has been very fruitful and pretty beautiful to watch. However; there’s something weird  that I’ve noticed. As I meet new people and grow in relationships with people, it often hits me that they will never know who I used to be. All that they see is who I am now. They get small glimpses into who I was when I have hard moments, but for the most part, they are getting to know someone who basically didn’t exist a year ago and definitely didn’t exist two years ago. But what’s crazy is that that’s their normal. The person I am now is their normal. I think that’s pretty cool. 

Oftentimes when you grow and go through a lot of change, it can be super hard to try and explain yourself to the people who have always known you or known you for a long time. It’s already challenging to navigate yourself through periods of growth and figure out who you’re  becoming and how that affects your choices,but when you also have to help your community navigate that, it can be overwhelming. It can make you question your growth. It can make you fall backwards into old habits because they make other people more comfortable or make you more comfortable. 

It was when I moved out that I really started to see the change that had occurred in me. I saw it in the types of relationships I had with people. Some relationships were not as black and white as they might have been before. I mostly saw it in the types of people I let in. I stopped letting in people  who drained me and surrounded myself with people who spoke life into me and reminded me of the value I hold as a child of God. I got to choose who I let in and I saw myself choosing people who were emotionally healthy and who were good for me. I saw myself love people well and learn to be loved well. I saw myself stop trying to prove that I was worthy of being loved and start to settle into who I was created to be.

I think that change was already occurring before I moved out. But when I moved out, God began to show me how much. He put so many specific people into my life to show me. They know who they are and they know how incredibly grateful I am for them. 

As you go through change and growth, I want you to know that it’s okay to let people go and let new people in. And let me be very clear. I am not bitter at all to the places and people that I let go of. I love them all dearly and know that God used them for where I was. I had to learn to keep any bitterness in check pretty quickly. When things become uncomfortable, it’s easy to push people away and use your bitterness towards them for not seeing you as a reason to push them away. I encourage you  not to let that happen. Let the peace of God help you to see them as God sees them - with unconditional love and grace. I also don’t think that everyone has to be pushed out of your life indefinitely. It’s okay - healthy even - to go through seasons of being apart. Its okay to say that you need space from a relationship in order to figure out how to be in that relationship well and love someone well.

I don’t know what it looks like for you to let go of people and let new people in. But I do know that no matter the situation, it’s really important to do it well and to do it with grace.  

I also want to mention that there will be some absolutely wonderful people who will stick with you and love you so well through your change and into your next season. They absolutely exist and are worth holding onto. You’ll know who they are because they’ll hold as tightly to you as you do to them. They’ll love you well and they’ll embrace you for everything that you are, whether it’s before, during, or after change. They are a gift from God and should be cherished. 

Something that I tend to mention a lot: give yourself grace. Give yourself grace for when you are learning to let people go and let new people in. It is hard. Part of me wanted to cling to every single person and place that I loved when I left because it was comfortable. But God called me here to Hamilton and eventually I had to realize that those relationships needed to be let go of, if only for a short while. I want to dive head first into Hamilton and everything that God has for me here, but I can’t do that if I’m holding tight to Niagara. 

I also want to mention that it’s okay to take notice of how much you have changed and be proud of it. You don’t have to be so hard on yourself and look at how much you still have to grow. Realize that you have worked hard to get where you are and don’t let shame tell you otherwise. Take a moment and take it all in. Take in the abundance because it is here and more is yet to come.

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

There is a time for everything,

and a season for every activity under the heavens

a time to be born and a time to die,

a time to plant and a time to uproot

a time to kill and a time to heal,

a time to tear down and a time to build,

a time to weep and a time to laugh,

a time to mourn and a time to dance,

 a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,

 a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,

 a time to search and a time to give up,

 a time to keep and a time to throw away,

 a time to tear and a time to mend,

 a time to be silent and a time to speak,

 a time to love and a time to hate,

 a time for war and a time for peace.