Growing Pains

Growing pain is the name we give the pain our children feel when they are little and their legs ache in the middle of the night from a hard days play. The pain they feel with the breakup of their first love. Or the disappointment that comes, when they find out that the hard work they put into a project just isn’t enough. But, growing pains do not end in adolescence. They carry on into adulthood and plague us at different stages of our lives.

There are times in our lives we can see change coming, other times we can be completely side swiped. When you go to bed the night before your wedding, you know tomorrow things will be different. You leave behind your single life, and begin a new life with your spouse. You know the day the test comes back positive, it marks a turning point in your life. A time that calls you to be more then who you were the day before. Whether we want it to or not, our life will not continue with the old status quo. Parents grow older, kids go through tough stages, friends move away, loved ones pass away. This is the flow of life. Our hard times may change us, but they do not define us.

When we are on the door step of change there can be a pang in your chest. These are the times that we reflect on where we have been, and where we want to be. Sometimes it is a matter of growing out of one person’s shadow, to move into place that you can claim for yourself. Mistakes can be made, some big, some small. Stretching beyond the old, into the new is not always a pleasant time. There is a commercial I like on TV. It is advertising for a business collage. The actress is wearing a fast food outfit and the announcer says “If you keep doing the same thing, what is going to change?” I don’t like to think of commercials as holding wisdom, but this one does. I turn my thoughts to that commercial when I find myself attacking problems with old habits that don’t give results.

Recently a friend sent me an article about Hillary Clinton visiting Our Lady of Guadalupe. From the questions Hillary asked, you could tell she did not know what to expect. She did not wake up that morning expecting to be face to face with a miracle. It occurred to me how much Mother Mary urns for us to come to her. To embrace her, and find comfort with her. She urges us to take up her cause, and fallow the path that God has laid before us. How will this change Hillary? I spent the day wondering….What would it be like if Hillary Clinton became a pro-life advocate? It seems it is not our choice to grow. Our choice is weather we grow closer to God. We are bound to stumble along the way. We have to try to be patient with ourselves and others. Growth can be painful , and it is not always easy. Change does not come in a day, a month, or a year… but a in a moment.