Growing Through Challenge or Yearning for "Normal"

 "I'm just waiting for things to go back to normal."

"Can we ever go back to normal."

"I wish things were normal again."

You've probably though, or even said, those words or something like them in the last five months. You're probably heard them from other many times.

We're living in a world that's been turned upside-down by something we can't even see. Our normal has been taken away. Everything feels strange.

And we're struggling with that.

I know I am. All I want to do is go to a gathering with friends and give them all long hugs. And, for someone who doesn't usually often struggles in large group gatherings and doesn't just hug everyone, that says a lot. If I'm feeling this way, I know lots of others are too.

We just want normal back.

We talk about a new normal. About what it might look like. What it might mean. How we can manage.

But it's not what we really want.

When you get beneath it all, we're longing for normal. For how things used to be.

Before I go on, let me be clear on one thing: I'm not here to debate whether we have a new normal. I'm not going to debate the choices made or not made. While our current reality has prompted some of the thoughts in this post, I'm not writing about opinions on it. You can agree or disagree, but this is not the place to debate that. I will delete all comments along those lines without notice or comment from me.

Whatever happens, there is one thing we know, this has changed and will continue to change us all. Just as any difficult time will do. When we walk through something hard, we will come out of it different than we were when we entered in.

I've been reading Beth Moore's newest book Chasing Vines and working on the study that goes with it. A couple days ago, I read a chapter that challenged me on how hard times change us. In the book, Beth writes:

"When we're going through a difficult season, wouldn't the best news of all be that life would simply go back to normal someday? When the framework of our daily existence gets completely dismantled and the landscape around us grows increasingly unreliable, our strongest longing is seldom prosperity. What we yearn for is normalcy. We don't tend to ask for the moon when we've lost all we've known. We just want some semblance of our old lives back.

The hard truth is, there's no real going back. But once we get up again, there can be a going forward. In His faithfulness, God sees to it what we thought was the end isn't the end at all. And eventually, perhaps not terribly long after, we realize we transitioned into a new normal."

We can't go back to what was normal before because what we've walked through has changed us. We're not the same person, so even the same things will be different because we've changed.

The danger for us comes when we become so focused on getting back to "normal" we miss God's new in our lives. When we do this, we stop producing any fruit for God's kingdom in our lives.

A little later in the same chapter, Beth writes:

"But in time, finding fruitfulness again will make more difference than you can imagine. If we can't have our treasured yesterday back, at least tomorrow can matter. The wonder of fruit bearing is that something meaningful can come from the meanest of seasons. What we endured matters."

If we allow God to work through our hard times, He will produce something beautiful in our lives. That is always His plan. But, we can't hold onto and keep looking for what once was.

So, how do we do this? How do we move through hard seasons and allow God to bring something beautiful out of them?

In the Bible study that goes along with the book, Beth writes:

"It is human nature to focus on what has changed in our lives and to long for what we once had. But when we're faced with the pain and anxiety of loss and change, perhaps we should fix our minds on what remains the same in our lives. God is constant even when our circumstances are not."

We get through and begin to live the new life God has for us by fixing our eyes on Him. He doesn't change no matter our circumstances.

So, where are your eyes fixed right now?

"So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal." - 2 Corinthians 4:18

"Therefore since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith." - Hebrews 12:1-2