I read somewhere that a woman’s body is made in a way that she won’t remember the pain from childbirth. It’s designed this way, because if she did remember, she would NOT want to go through it ever again… The love and joy she feels for her child overwrites the memory of pain. And so, the human race survives 🙂

I think this is true for all change that brings something beautiful and amazing into our lives. We are so grateful for the ‘new and improved’ life, that we willingly let go of the pain it took us to get there.

But what is it about a change that takes something beautiful out of our lives? Or someone we love deeply?

“Where was the road before?” asked Evan (my middle son), as we were driving on a newly widened stretch of the road in front of his high school.

It’s only been a few months of having this beautiful new road, and already it’s difficult for us to remember what it had looked like before. In our minds, we could ‘see’ the memory of traffic jams and piles of dirt that lingered for almost two years as the road was being rebuilt. But neither one of us could ‘feel’ the frustration, impatience or anything we might have felt then. It was easy to let go of all of those feelings.

Evan and I spoke about change and how humans adapt to it.

“Even when it’s a change we don’t want or ask for,” he added.

Then he put on a song and both of us focused on the beauty of the moment.

The secret is to let go of whatever it is that no longer is.

Because the longer we resist the change, the longer we will remain stuck in the pain of it.
“Life hurts,” my mom said to me in a phone conversation last week.

The reason it ‘hurts’ is because it constantly takes us out of what we are “used to,” and presents us with something new.

A baby grows and weans, a child grows into an adult and moves out of his parent’s nest; our bodies grow older, slower and more fragile. People come and go, the world around us changes.

If we resist change, we become resentful and angry.

Unwilling to change internally, we will find some external thing or situation to complain about, or blame… Our resistance to change eventually becomes an ‘obstacle to Grace.’

Without Grace’s healing touch, we cling to what we ‘know’ was better ‘before the change,’ and we insist that the world – and life – change back to it.

But they won’t.

Because life is always taking us from the familiar into something new.

So we learn to accept change. We become willing to let go of something old, and change our minds about the ‘new.’ We lean into the Grace and surrender our desire to keep things ‘in our control’. In turn, we heal deeper, grow in love, and become more compassionate.

Resistance to change becomes an obstacle to Grace. Embracing it brings more Grace into our lives, which allows us to overcome the pain and the memory of it – just like the mother after childbirth.