This fall is my senior year of high school, which has brought me incredible nostalgia on some days. My friends and I have looked back at old pictures of our youth group when we were in middle school, I laugh when I tell new coworkers that I’ve been at my job for a year, and I can still remember being backstage performing with the girls at my old ballet studio back when I still danced.

But sometimes the nostalgia isn’t so pleasant. Even if you’re long past high school, everyone can look back on things in their past that they’d rather forget.

There’s old friends who you aren’t close to anymore, horrible classes or teachers you’re glad to be rid of, bad choices you wish you wouldn’t have made or a job you wish you hadn’t taken. Or maybe life feels like a torrential hurricane right now, and you’re looking back on “the good old days” and longing to time travel back to when everything was so easy and carefree.

Yet all of those unpleasant, uncomfortable, maybe even painful memories and experiences are a part of you — they’re part of what’s shaped you into the person you are today.

We usually don’t tend to see it that way though, do we?

At some point in your life, either you or someone you know has probably spoken the phrase, “I don’t like change.” Routine-oriented people especially tend to suffer from this, but I think we all feel it to some degree. Nobody likes coming to the realization that both the good and the bad moments in our lives can be turned on their head in an instant; nobody likes feeling as if their life is out of their control.

That’s our real problem with change — it reminds us how powerless we are to direct our lives the way we want them to go.

Our worldview has a lot to do with what we do with that reality.

Yes, the future is almost entirely unknown and all our plans could be swept away in an instant, for better or for worse. But as Christians our life has one goal, which is our growth and sanctification, and we can go to sleep at night knowing that God won’t let us fall short of that one goal.

“… He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ” — Philippians 1:6

“Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to present you faultless, before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy, to God our Savior, who alone is wise, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, both now and forever. Amen.” — Jude 24-25

That’s not to say that we aren’t allowed to make plans and work towards our own goals; God put us on this earth to be a light to people around us, but that doesn’t mean that all we do is pray and go to church services 24/7. We’re made to work and have relationships and to have favorite foods and favorite smells and to enjoy the good gifts God gives to us. We just have to temper that enjoyment with the reality that this world won’t last forever.

So as my senior year gets closer, and I imagine what life will feel like next year as a high school graduate, I want to be able to look towards the future with joy — and look back on the past with joy too. Sure, some things will be harder as I get older and there might be days where I wish I was still a kid. But I don’t want to be someone who’s stuck wishing they could turn back the clock and live in the past.

I want to enjoy life as it unfolds before me, even when I don’t have every detail figured out or when other people are choosing different paths. I want to be like the ocean waves and be more alert to God’s voice than anyone else’s. And even if all my plans get flipped upside down and I have to adjust to a lot of unexpected changes, I know I can rest in the fact that nothing surprises God and absolutely nothing will get in His way.

“There is no wisdom or counsel or understanding against the LORD.” — Proverbs 21:30