When All the Things Change, Except for the One

Homeostasis.

I still remember the first time I heard the word from a straight-backed wooden desk.

“the tendency toward a relatively stable equilibrium between interdependent elements…the tendency of a system to maintain internal stability, owing to the coordinated response of its parts to any situation or stimulus that would tend to disturb its normal condition or function…”

I might have jumped out of that desk and yelled if not for the fear of living the rest of my high school days as the girl who, well, jumped out of her desk and yelled during a lecture on homeostasis.

Homeostasis. It’s what our bodies do all the time – seeking stability in the face of change, maintaining equilibrium and steadiness and constancy. And it resonated with my 15 year old heart because it put a name to the thing I had always sought. I had a new goal now.

When I grow up, I want to be homeostatic.

I crave stability. I respect steadiness. I want to be like a tree firmly planted, and I would rather everything around me value that quality as well. Can everything please just stop changing?

But it doesn’t. Because since the beginning of time it has been winter, and then spring, and then summer, and then fall.

I remember the summer. I remember the hot, sticky day at Vacation Bible School when I moved from the old life to the new. I remember all of the hot, sticky days at Vacation Bible School after that year, full of dried macaroni crafts and fruit juice and songs, where I learned to love the stories; I remember precept day camps, full of colored pencils and triple spaced papers, where I learned to love the words that contain life; I remember the ice cream socials and watermelon seed-spitting contests and fourth of July celebrations on the lake. Later I remember summer camps and mission trips and growing into the faith that had sprouted in a little upstairs room at Northside Baptist Church.

And you were always there. You, with your servants’ hearts and your laughter and your willingness to love a clumsy, sometimes “know-it-all” preacher’s daughter with thick glasses and a sensitive heart.

You were there in the summer.

I remember the spring. I remember music – children’s musicals filled with ridiculous costumes and dance moves, a band in youth group that was just starting to feel our way through what it means to lead in worship. My hands and heart beginning to discover keys and strings and putting words to melody. Five part harmony, choir cantatas, solos. Pianos and organs and guitars and voices.

And you were always there. You, smiling through all the awkwardness, encouraging me each step along the way, allowing me to make mistakes and grow without feeling judged, giving me space to serve, teaching me gently what it means to come together with the body of Christ week after week and sing in spirit and in truth.

You were there in the spring.

I remember the winter. I remember sickness and surgery, I remember addiction and grief. I remember death. I remember conflict and moral failures and fear that things would never be okay, but they always were.

Because you were there. You were at the hospital with support or at the house with a meal; you were writing letters or calling on the phone. You were at the funerals. You were here, promising my family that you wouldn’t leave or give up when disunity threatened our little piece of the body of Christ.

You were there in the winter.

But there’s something about fall, isn’t there? We came to you in the fall 32 years ago, and now we are leaving in the fall. I remember you sending me off to New Orleans in the fall, with prayers and love and excitement and support, and then you folding me back in a month later, during one of the most uncertain times in my life. I remember having my first baby in the fall, and your prayers holding me up even at such a distance until everything was okay.

You were always there in the fall.

You have helped to raise me; you have taught me, challenged me, planned my wedding, gave so generously when Spencer and I were living in the “gospel ghetto” at Southeastern, welcomed my children just as you welcomed me. You are home, and without you I would not be who I am.

But it’s time for the fall. Time for change. And what I am coming to understand about the seasons is that everything under the sun will change, but there is One who will not.

So I want to leave you with words that come from the pen of an awkward, clumsy preacher’s daughter, who has learned, thanks to you, how to rest not in my own ability to control the change in my life, but in the One who has been writing this story all along…

How firm a foundation we hold in our faith
From one generation to the next proclaim
His steadfast mercy, His enduring love
In every season, He remains the unchanging One.

Love,

The Middle Pickard