Have you ever wanted something to change for a really long time, only to be surprised by how hard it was when it finally did? It makes me wonder: Why is change so hard, even when it’s something we wanted?
That was our move to Florida.
Chip and I had talked about moving for years. We had family here, we loved the weather, and we were ready for something different. There were plenty of reasons to make the move, and by the time we actually did it, I was excited.
What I wasn’t prepared for was how much it would hurt to leave New Jersey.
Of course I knew I would miss people. What I hadn’t fully considered was how connected our lives had become to that place. We had friends and a church we loved. We had favorite places and familiar routines. We had people who knew us without needing the backstory.
It turns out you don’t always know how deeply rooted you are somewhere until you pull up the roots.
And for a while, I found myself holding two things that didn’t seem like they should go together: I was genuinely happy we’d moved to Florida, and I genuinely missed the life we’d left behind.
I hadn’t changed my mind.
I was adjusting to change.
Why Change Feels So Uncomfortable—even When It’s Good
There’s an old saying that people prefer “the devil they know to the devil they don’t.”
It’s not exactly how I’d choose to describe moving to Florida 😂, but there is something to the idea.
Familiarity gives us information.
You know how your job works, even if you don’t particularly like it. You know your place in the family. You know the people you can call, the route you take to the grocery store, where you sit at church, and roughly what next Tuesday is going to look like.
Then something changes and all kinds of little question marks show up where there weren’t any before.
This can happen even when the change is something you wanted. You finally get the new job and wonder whether you’ll be good at it. Your child becomes more independent—which was always the goal—and suddenly you’re figuring out what your role looks like now. You move somewhere you’ve wanted to live and realize you have no idea who you’re going to call when you need a dentist.
None of that necessarily means we preferred the old life.
We just knew how to live it.
I wonder if that’s part of what makes change harder than we expect. Maybe we aren’t always resisting the new thing as much as we’re resisting the loss of predictability that comes with it.
Even Good Change Can Cost Us Something
I think we sometimes expect good change to feel entirely good.
If we wanted it, prayed for it, worked toward it, or deliberately chose it, then being sad about any part of it can feel almost contradictory.
But most change involves some kind of trade.
When we moved to Florida, I gained something I very much wanted. I also gave up the ability to meet a longtime friend for lunch without planning a flight.
One didn’t cancel out the other.
A promotion can be exciting and still mean leaving a team you love. Your child can be doing exactly what you raised them to do while you miss having them around. A new relationship can be wonderful while changing routines you enjoyed.
Sometimes we treat that discomfort as though it’s evidence.
Maybe I made the wrong decision.
Maybe.
But missing something you left behind isn’t proof you were supposed to stay there.
Sometimes it simply means there was something there worth missing.
We Can Mistake Uncertainty for a Warning
This is where I think change gets especially tricky.
Once something feels unfamiliar, we naturally pay more attention. That’s not a bad thing. There are times when discomfort should cause us to stop, pray, ask questions, seek wise counsel, or reconsider a decision.
But discomfort isn’t automatically discernment.
Sometimes something feels unfamiliar because it is unfamiliar.
I think that’s particularly important when we’re trying to follow God faithfully, because it’s very easy to start looking at our feelings as though they’re directional signs.
I don’t feel settled about this yet, so maybe God doesn’t want me here.
But what if “settled” simply takes time?
I certainly didn’t feel at home in Florida immediately. I couldn’t have. Home isn’t created by changing the address on your driver’s license.
There were new relationships to build, new routines to develop and a whole new version of normal that hadn’t had time to become normal yet.
Maybe we’ve sometimes asked a new life to feel familiar much sooner than it possibly could.
We Want God to Lead Us. We’d Just Really Like the Itinerary.
There’s a detail in Abraham’s story that makes me smile a little.
When God told Abram to leave his country, his people and his father’s household, He told him to go “to the land I will show you” (Genesis 12:1).
I would have had follow-up questions.
Where exactly?
How long will it take?
What are we doing once we get there?
God gave Abram enough information to obey, but He didn’t give him the entire plan before asking him to move.
That pattern shows up throughout Scripture, and if I’m being truthful, it’s not my preferred arrangement. I like information. I like knowing what’s coming. I especially like knowing that the decision I’m making today is going to work out the way I hope it will six months from now.
But that’s not really trust, is it?
It’s certainty.
And change has a way of revealing how easily we confuse the two.
What If You Don’t Need to Know Yet?
This doesn’t mean we stop thinking or planning. There may be questions you need to ask, information you need to gather, wise counsel you need to seek or a decision you genuinely need to make.
Do those things.
The problem comes when we’ve done what we reasonably can and keep going because we can’t tolerate the unanswered questions.
That’s usually where I notice control starting to creep in.
I’ve written before about what trying to control everything can actually cost us, because I’ve learned that the search for certainty can take up an enormous amount of mental space without actually giving us the reassurance we’re looking for.
You see, there is a difference between responsibility and control, and I’ve learned they can look remarkably similar. Responsibility asks me to do my part. Control wants some assurance that if I do my part correctly, I’ll get the outcome I want. Figuring out where our responsibility ends and control begins isn’t always obvious, especially when the outcome really matters to us.
If uncertainty tends to send you into planning, overthinking, or trying to control the outcome: Letting Go: A Workbook on Trust and Control will help you identify what’s actually yours to manage—and what isn’t. Explore the Letting Go Workbook.
But for today, maybe there’s a simpler question:
What do I actually need to know right now?
You may discover there is something you need to do next.
You may also discover that what you really want isn’t another piece of information. You want reassurance about something that hasn’t happened yet.
Those aren’t the same thing.
When the Change Isn’t Something You Wanted
Of course, there’s another side to this conversation.
Some changes aren’t exciting opportunities that come with unexpected growing pains. Some arrive without our permission and change things we desperately wanted to keep.
That deserves its own conversation, which is why I addressed it specifically in The Change You Didn’t Choose.
For now, I’m thinking about the changes we choose, pray for, work toward or even celebrate—and the surprising discomfort that can come with them.
If you’re somewhere in the middle of one right now, maybe you don’t need to interpret every uncomfortable feeling or answer every question about where this is going.
You may simply be learning how to live somewhere you haven’t lived before.
God already knows this territory.
And maybe, for today, it’s enough to ask:
What has He already put in front of me?