Comfort Zones

In the Rollercoaster Tycoon game I play you can pick up a person, the SIM, and just drop them into another scene. The rollercoaster repair man is comfortably working on one coaster when I pick him up and dangle him near a broken down coaster on the other side of the park and drop him. Suddenly he's on the other side of the amusement park and heading toward another coaster to repair it. I took him out of his comfort zone and now he has to get his bearings in a new environment and get to work on a new task.

God does the same with me. One day things are rolling along, then all of a sudden, I'm picked up and moved to Tennessee. Eight years later, things are rolling along fine, secure in my home and new job. It's good.

Then, things start changing. I'm not feeling so "comfortable" anymore. The kids are growing up. Justin will be moving out, and he's joined the Navy! Tif will be driving soon and gaining even more independence. Katie has a man friend and sure is spending a lot of time with him. Life seems to have hit a couple of bumps in the road for me. I'm starting to feel a bit of uncertainty about the future. He's moving me out of my comfort zone.

Tonight I'm trying to be a good "not the mom" while Tif is sick with fever. I just celebrated the fact that it fell below 100°. But, caring for the sick is NOT in my comfort zone!

Speaking of caring for the sick -- I have a new friend who needs some help since she suffered a physical injury. That's really brought me out of my comfort zone because it is as though God is handing me some responsibility here. He's asking me to step out and serve someone. It's very awkward, but I'm doing it and He's blessing me. Blessing me BIG!

I've also been convicted about being more transparent in my Christian walk. God has provided me some people in my life to help me with this. It is definitely NOT an easy thing to do, be transparent, so again, I am way out of my comfort zone with this.

I am learning that there are wonderful blessings lurking beyond comfort zones. If I were to stay in my comfort zone, those blessings would remain hidden, but now that I am venturing out, I can see with new eyes, from a new perspective, and God then reveals those blessings to me. In fact, He is the source of these blessings and by stepping out, He is requiring me to trust Him. In doing so, I am experiencing Him in new ways, and will hopefully grow ever closer to Him.

I think God sometimes becomes invisible to us in our comfort zones so He moves us out. He can't stand for us not to be able to see him. I think it's like when sunlight shines in the window and you can see the air all full of dust -- that air always looks like that, but we don't notice it until the light shines through. We don't notice God unless we look out from behind the "zone" and into the Light!

We've got to move out of our comfort zones!