Growing

It’s unbelievable how fast babies grow! It feels like I blink and Kelton is bigger. I mean think about it, if adults grew as much and as fast as babies do in one year, we would have stretch marks out the wazoo and growing pains like nobody’s business! LOL! By age one, babies typically have tripled their birth weight. It’s just so amazing to watch how fast he changes right before my eyes.

Our growth as adults doesn’t usually happen physically anymore. It happens in our day to day lives — change; growth. It’s painful at times for things to change. Change is hard when it’s not a change we want or expect. It’s easier when it’s something we wanted and anticipated.

My most recent experience with change and growth has happened in the spiritual sense. For years my prayers were always geared toward one direction it seemed — for the desire of my heart; a longing to be a Momma. No matter how much I tried to pray differently, I couldn’t. It always came back to that one thing. Now, since I’ve had Kelton that has all changed! I remember kneeling down at the alter to pray for the first time after having Kelton and I was just speechless. It was like I didn’t know what to pray. I felt like I had to relearn how to pray because I wasn’t having to pray the same prayer I had been praying for almost 7 years. It all changed. It was new.

With new prayers comes new territory so to speak. Things that I used to pray about or worry about didn’t bother me anymore and were of no importance. That meant that the devil couldn’t fight me with the same kind of battles or weapons any more. It was of no effect now. So, because I was on new grounds, that meant the battle fields changed. The devil had to find new tactics and new ways to come at me with. He definitely found them.

I had to learn that with new territory came new battles. I also realized that I couldn’t fight the new battles with old weapons. I felt like I was losing the struggles but it was because I was trying to fight the new battles with the same methods that I fought my old battles with. It wasn’t working. But through lots of prayer and breakdowns and more prayers, God helped me pick up some new weapons to use to be victorious through Him.

I started realizing how far I had come. With being in new territory that must have meant that I outgrew the old land and needed to be in something bigger and better. I outgrew where I was. At first being in the new territory was a struggle — painful at times until I figured out it was where I needed to be. I was in a new area that I needed to adjust to and grow into but at first I didn’t want to grow. I liked my old comfort zone.

You’ll never grow in your comfort zone.

Now that I’ve settled into my new space, I realize how it was necessary for me to grow. If I ain’t growing spiritually then eventually my soul will wither away. To me that sounds more painful than growing. So, I started thanking God for my growth. Thanking God that He was still working on me. Thanking God that He still had a plan for me. It all requires growth though. I thanked God for my growing pains. I came to the conclusion at church one night this:

I’d rather have growing pains than the pains from not growing.

Growth is necessary to become stronger, better, successful, etc.. Becoming satisfied too soon can stump your growth and success. I don’t want to become stagnant in my spiritual life with the Lord. If I ever decide I don’t need to grow anymore in Him, then the eternal pain that I could feel from that would be way worse than just some simple growing pains. I’ll take the growing pains over the regret any day.