I was not Looking for Change

It's change, really.  That's what new is all about.  Change.  For some it happens regularly, for others not regularly enough.  I happen to fall into the former category, where change comes about not as a result of some thing that just happens to you and you don't see it coming, but rather an intentional, sweeping movement that is planned and thought out (not always with identified results, but thought out nonetheless) and, therefore, meant to be.

Change - whether intentional or consequential, planned or just part of life's course - is always meant to be; it's a part of life, a part of how things naturally happen.  Without it we would not grow, would not attain goals, would not, well... change.

And yet, even though we know it is coming, and we know it helps us to grow and to stretch, and we understand the consequences of not changing when times call for something different, it is hard.

This time for me, however, I was not looking for change.  It came for me.

I did not choose to move on,
I was happy
and successful
and content
and challenged
right where I was at.

But as my good friend Koriann writes to me, in her reflection at the end of the school year,
It was time for change "... because the time is right and he is called."

Those words stuck with me, sunk into me, sat with me and next to me for a long while.

As I begin something new - this exciting new opportunity where I will have the privilege of being the principal of a high school I know of only from the perspective of a parent, as it is the school my kids attend - I know and understand that this is the path.  The time was right, and as difficult as it was to say goodbye, and to say thank you to those who have meant so much to me and who have taught me so much about myself as an educator and as a person, this is still the right choice for me and I will only grow because of it.  It is intentional, sweeping, new, meant to be.  It is Change.  And I am so very grateful.