Why Change Can Be Good, Even When You’re Not Ready

It’s 2008 and my wife Annie and I were in a hotel room in Hanoi, Vietnam.

Several hours earlier, we became parents when a beautiful and tiny baby girl was placed in our arms. Upon making it back to our temporary home, we were exhausted, so we fed our daughter and then Annie put her to sleep in the little crib setup beside our bed.

Photo Credit: Richard Leeming, Creative Commons

We got in bed too, and as I drifted off to sleep, I remember thinking how much better I’d feel in the morning after eight or nine hours of sleep.

An hour and a half later Annie shook me awake.

I immediately became aware of a noise, a brain-piercing, blood-curdling, soul-melting noise.

“What is that?!” I mumbled. I genuinely had no idea.

“It’s the baby,” Annie said with a mixture of pity and disbelief.

Oh.

“Oh. What do I do?” I asked.

“Pick her up. Change her diaper. Try to put her back to sleep.”

Oh.

“Oh. Okay.”

I did those things.

Eventually the baby went back to sleep for another hour or three, and somehow we survived our first night as parents. In the morning I found myself thinking about what a ridiculous rookie I was, having kissed a six-month-old goodnight without even considering the possibility that I might hear from her before morning.

It dawned on me that, despite spending almost two years pursuing this adoption, I wasn’t actually ready to become a dad.

This bothered me for a bit—hello again, inadequacy issues!—but eventually I realized I didn’t have to be ready for fatherhood because fatherhood itself would make me ready. Preparation is valuable, there’s no doubt about that, but it can only take us so far.

When we’re confronted by big changes, actual practice takes us the rest of the way.

I’ve found this to be true in different areas of my life:

going off to college, getting married, and taking on new challenges at work. Even in deciding to follow Jesus. In every case, I wasn’t ready. I didn’t fully realize what I was getting into, and as a result, I struggled out of the gate.

But as a I think back on my story, the struggle that comes from significant change has often been the impetus for significant growth.

Struggle has been the crucible in which I’ve learned most of what I know about love, grace, leadership, and efficiently changing dirty diapers.

Sometimes when we say, “I’m not ready,” what we really mean is that we’re not ready to succeed.

And we’re probably right.

But the new roles and opportunities that present themselves to us often won’t for us to be 100 percent ready to succeed. Rather, what we need in order to step across those thresholds is a readiness to struggle, learn, and grow.

We’re not born ready to be successful professionals, spouses, parents, neighbors, and friends. We become those things over time, through practice and process, sometimes failing, sometimes winning, always persisting.

So, are you ready to be a ________? Maybe not.

But are you ready to try, to work, to be stretched and shaped, on your way to becoming a _________.

Yeah, you’re ready for that.