I’ve never been a big fan of change. A lot of people share my feelings. There have been changes in life that have stopped me in my tracks and made me want to run home and hide under my blankets and never come out. However, over the last couple of weeks, I’ve come to find that some changes make all the difference in life.
I’ve always been the type of person who enjoys a routine. Each day is laid out and I know almost exactly what I am going to do. Big changes in life always had the ability to scare me and leave me with that queasy, anxious feeling in my stomach.
When I made the leap from high school to college, I was terrified. Leaving home for the first time, living on my own, being responsible for my own bills and having to make new friends made me feel more anxious about going to college than excited. It took months before I became comfortable with the setting and didn’t want to run home every chance I could get.
The same thing happened when I graduated from college and started the search for a real job. Once I had a degree, I decided I should be able to do something other than waiting tables and serving burgers, so I started searching and eventually found something that I enjoyed, but that didn’t stop my knees from shaking the first few weeks I came to work.
However, I’ve had some great changes too. The transition into married life was easy. The transition that took place when we became parents was extensive, but wonderful, and now we’re ready for yet another wonderful change. Just a few weeks ago, my husband, who has been in the Army for about ten years, began the transition back to civilian life. (While I’m sure this was a more difficult transition for my husband than it is for me, so far, I think we’re both happy with the results of this change.)
A lot of things in our lives have already been altered with this transition. For starters, since he’s been out of the military, I’ve gotten to see my husband every day. Between deployments and a work schedule that kept him in Fort Drum while I was here, that’s something that hasn’t happened very often in the four years we’ve been married.
What’s even better is that at the moment, we don’t have to be looking ahead to the next deployment or guessing where or when he might have to go next. Everything in our lives so far has been scheduled with those things in mind. Our wedding was planned in a matter of three months, due to the fact that every time we tried to plan ahead more than that, something would be changed at the last minute. Even the birth of our first child has to be scheduled in order to ensure that my husband could be there for that moment.
Although this is one of the biggest changes we have made in the last few years, it’s also one that has convinced me that change doesn’t have to be terrifying. It can be a wonderful part of life.