I don’t think the goal is to become someone who loves change. I’m not even sure I want to be that person.
There are things in my life I hope don’t change for a very long time. I love traditions that have become part of our family, relationships with years of history behind them, routines that make my days work and places that feel like home. There is nothing wrong with wanting to hold onto things that are good.
The problem, of course, is that life doesn’t ask our permission before it changes.
Our kids grow up. Jobs and friendships change. Our bodies change. Churches change. Families enter new seasons, and something that worked beautifully five years ago may not fit our lives at all today. Some of those changes happen so gradually that we barely notice them. Others draw a very clear line between before and after.
Eventually, though, we have to figure out how to live in today’s reality.
That’s what I mean when I talk about learning how to adapt to change. Not becoming someone who gets excited every time life gets rearranged, but learning how to recognize when a season really has changed and finding our footing in the one we’re actually in.
Sometimes We’re Trying to Get Back to a Normal That Doesn’t Exist Anymore
Have you ever caught yourself waiting for things to get back to normal?
Sometimes that’s completely reasonable. A particularly busy month ends, the houseguests go home or you recover from an illness, and life eventually returns to its familiar rhythm.
But sometimes we keep waiting for “normal” long after life has made it pretty clear that we’re not going back there.
Maybe your kids’ schedules have changed or your responsibilities at work have grown. Someone who used to be part of your everyday life isn’t anymore. You’ve moved, retired, become a parent or watched your children leave home. Even our bodies can force us to admit that the schedule we’ve kept for years isn’t working anymore.
The specifics are different for all of us, but the temptation is the same: we keep trying to make the systems, expectations and routines from the old version of life work in the new one.
I’ve started to think that there comes a point when How do I get things back to normal? stops being the most useful question.
Maybe a better one is:
What works for the life I’m actually living now?
And for those of us who follow Jesus, I’d take that one step further: How do I live faithfully in the season God has me in now—not the one I keep wishing I could get back to?
That’s a different question entirely.
Let the Old Thing Have Been Good
One reason moving forward can be difficult is that it sometimes feels strangely disloyal to what came before.
We can wonder whether creating a new tradition somehow means the old one didn’t matter, or whether loving people in a new place diminishes the relationships we left behind. Even changing a routine that served us well for years can feel like admitting we were doing something wrong before.
But something can have been genuinely good and still belong to a season that has ended.
I think we make change harder when we believe we have to convince ourselves that the old thing wasn’t that great anyway. We don’t. There are seasons of life I would happily revisit if given the chance. I can miss them, be grateful for them and still recognize that I don’t live there anymore.
There is room to thank God for what was without trying to recreate it indefinitely.
Sometimes honoring a season means being grateful that we got to live it at all—and then allowing the next one to become something of its own.
Give the New Thing Enough Time to Become Familiar
I think we forget how much of our old life was once new too.
Think about starting a new job. At your old job, you knew who to ask, where things were, how long something should take and which problems actually required your attention. Then you start somewhere new and suddenly you’re asking questions about things that used to require no thought at all.
It’s easy to compare the competence we had after years in one place with the awkwardness of being brand-new somewhere else and decide we don’t like the new version very much.
That’s not exactly a fair comparison.
The same thing happens with a new routine, a new church, a new neighborhood or a different family rhythm. Familiarity took time the first time around too; we just don’t remember building it.
So before deciding something isn’t working, it may be worth asking whether we’ve actually given it enough time to become familiar.
Change the Routine When the Routine No Longer Fits
This may be the hardest part for those of us who genuinely like systems. Once I find something that works, I would prefer that it continue working forever. Thank you very much.
Unfortunately, routines don’t get to dictate the terms of our lives.
A good routine is supposed to serve the life we’re living. So when life changes, sometimes the routine has to change with it. Your quiet time may need to look different because your mornings aren’t what they used to be. A family holiday may need a new rhythm because the family itself has changed. A friendship may require more intentionality because neither of you has the availability you once did.
Changing the way we do something doesn’t necessarily mean we’re giving up on what mattered about it. Sometimes changing the form is exactly how we preserve what matters most.
I’ve seen this in my own quiet time over the years. What my quiet time actually looks like today is different from what it looked like in other seasons of my life. The goal hasn’t changed. I still want time with God. But the way that happens has changed because my life has changed.
I think there’s freedom in realizing that faithfulness may not look exactly the way it used to.
How to Adapt to Change You Don’t Like
This distinction matters because not every change is good.
Some changes are wonderful. Others are painful, unfair or simply not what we would have chosen. Adapting to what has happened doesn’t require us to rewrite the story and decide we’re glad it happened.
It simply means we’re willing to deal with what is true.
There have been times when I’ve spent far too much energy wishing something were different, as though refusing to accept the reality of it could somehow change the reality itself. It couldn’t. It only kept me fighting a situation that already existed.
Acceptance isn’t approval. And for a Christian, it isn’t giving up on prayer or deciding God can’t change a circumstance either. We can absolutely ask Him to change something while also asking Him how to live faithfully if it doesn’t change today.
That gives us somewhere to go.
Instead of waiting until I like this version of life, I can ask God, What does following You look like here? What do you have for me to do today?
Pay Attention to What This Season Needs
Ecclesiastes 3 begins with a familiar line:
“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens.” — Ecclesiastes 3:1
The verses that follow describe very different experiences of life: beginnings and endings, grieving and celebrating, holding on and letting go. Scripture doesn’t describe faithfulness as finding one perfect rhythm and then maintaining it forever. Life has seasons.
I find that reassuring because different seasons really do require different things from us.
There are times when we have plenty of capacity and times when we need to simplify. There are seasons when relationships happen almost effortlessly and others when staying connected requires real intention. Sometimes God gives us an opportunity to step forward, and sometimes wisdom looks more like releasing something we can no longer carry.
We can spend a lot of energy trying to make the current season behave like the last one, when perhaps the better question is simply:
What does this season need from me now?
For me, that’s also a prayer.
God, what are You asking of me here?
Not five years ago. Not when life settles down. Not when I finally understand where all of this is going.
Here.
You Don’t Have to Become a Person Who Loves Change
Maybe adapting to change isn’t simply about finding a new routine or getting comfortable with a different version of life. For those of us who follow Jesus, there’s something more at stake. We are still called to live fully and victoriously in the season we’re in—not someday when life settles down, but here.
That doesn’t mean every season feels victorious. Some won’t. It means our ability to live with purpose, faith and hope isn’t dependent on keeping our circumstances exactly the way we want them.
And through all of those changes, there is something wonderfully steady about knowing that God isn’t trying to find His footing in the new season with us.
Hebrews 13:8 says, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.”
Our circumstances aren’t promised that kind of consistency. Neither are our routines, relationships, jobs or seasons of life.
Jesus is.
Maybe that’s what gives us the freedom to become a little more adaptable. We don’t have to make everything around us stay the same in order to have something solid beneath us.
So no, you don’t have to become someone who loves change.
You can still miss what was. You can still need time to adjust. You can even still prefer the third row.
You just don’t have to let sitting in the fourth row ruin your Sunday.