At the time, I was an “elder” at a small community church and had few questions about my beliefs. I knew what I knew and very little was at question. I admired the Pastor there, and I believed I was genuinely where I needed to be. Then it came crashing down. The Pastor quickly turned his eyes away from his first Love and became obsessed with numbers. The people there grew more discouraged. Shea and I knew we had to move on, and at a time when the church may have needed us the most.

It only got worse from there. My closest friend, whom we moved in with, turned out to be someone who found his confidence in destroying the confidence of his wife. I suffered a major knee injury, which made running – a healthy pastime – impossible to do. And we assisted the “abused” wife in escaping the abuse – as we were asked by her to do – only to see her return to it. So in a very short period of time, we went from confident and happy, to lost, disillusioned and separated from our closest confidants and friends.

Even worse, during that time, we didn’t keep in touch with our other friends as we should have. We neglected them and disconnected like we never had before. It was a dark time.

However, in recent months, we’ve reconnected with many of those friends – nay, family – as they apparently never gave up on us. In fact, one of my closest friends over the past 6 to 8 years is soon to be a new father, and I couldn’t be any happier. Another of my close friends has joined me in my journey to return back to good health, and he’s proven to be a man of great integrity, intelligence and compassion. We’ve also reconnected with a church willing to accept our differences and our failures, lead by a Pastor who cares more about people than he does about numbers.

And even though my faith has taken some dramatic shifts (which will be covered at some other point), I find that the challenges are nothing more than the continuance of change. You live, you learn. You win, you lose, you succeed and you fail. If you’re lucky, you’ll find out who your truest friends – family – are. They’re the ones who call you the day after examinations to see how you did. They’re the ones who answer the phone even when the last call happened months prior. And they’re the ones who lift you up when you are unable to do so yourself.

So, after all this time, I find that the change is continuing. I’d like to think it’s growth, though I’m sure some would argue it is regression. Either way, I’m not the same person I was and I hope that I will be able to say the same thing 5 years from now. For if there’s one thing that’s been a constant in my life recently, it’s change.

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