My dad keeps some small lobsters in his fish tank. One of them recently molted, leaving behind an almost complete shell, and he was puzzled as to how the lobster gets out of its old shell so cleanly. So I looked it up and showed him the video of how it happens. Pretty amazing.
I then remembered this other thing I'd recently seen, which was about the lesson that lobsters teach us about growth. The lobster essentially goes through continuous growth all of its life. But because the shell is hard, it can't just keep growing. The lobster's flesh becomes increasingly packed within the constricting shell, and it eventually has to shed its old shell before it can continue growing. Apparently, the lobster grows 15% in size and 40-50% in weight just in the few hours immediately after molting. The point is that the lobster's stimulus for growth is being all squashy and uncomfortable in its old shell. Without this discomfort, it never has to molt and grow.
I totally agree with the lobster analogy. I grew the most in learning how to love in the immediate aftermath of having kids, amidst the sleep deprivation, butt wiping and vomit clean-ups. I'm pretty sure that if I hadn't had kids, I could have gone 10-20 years without learning what it means to really love, by caring for those little wailing blobs unconditionally!
I also grew the most at work whenever I entered a new area which I didn't know much about. I'd stubbornly stayed in the same post in my first job, thinking - this is what I know how to do and I'm sticking to it! When I finally mustered the courage to change, I was horrified. I didn't know anything. I was attending meetings where the words seemed to be in English, but the meaning was Martian, as far as I could tell. Worse, I had to document those Martian instructions. Even worse, I then had to teach and explain to other people what the instructions meant!
But that year, I learned more than I had in the preceding seven. And as uncomfortable as I felt, I knew I was growing. It really helped me to understand that change can be supremely uncomfortable, but it is the quickest way to learn and grow. Literally every post from then on has been an adventure in discomfort. I haven't always embraced it, but I have been fortunate to have bosses who pushed me to unfamiliar places.
For a year, I was assistant to the CEO, and he asked me on the first day, what I would like to help him with. I said, well, I'm a lawyer by training so I can help you with that. But I'm not too clever with numbers, so keep me away from those. He promptly set my first task to help with the quarterly results! I thought it was ridiculous. And as I expected, I was nearly useless, and it was super painful. But I eventually learned, quite to my astonishment, that numbers can tell stories, even without words. And some people are really good at it! And I re-learned that discomfort brings growth.
There's one other important area where discomfort brings growth. My pastor once asked the congregation - we pray for revival, but are we prepared to pay the price? What if the church gets so crowded we have no space to sit? There are no more parking spaces? What if our comfortable cell families get so big we have to split, and some of us have to lead? What if we have to make friends with strangers?
Discomfort leads to growth. The first time I agreed to lead a cell group was in university. I had never led before. I had less experience as a Christian than any of the members. I didn't know how to lead worship, how to pray. That group grew and multiplied within a year. Conversely, there was a period of time, especially after I just got married and got kids, when I was content to just be a cell member. Even though by now I "knew more" about my faith, I just stopped growing.
It was time to get uncomfortable again, and so, several years ago, I volunteered to lead a new cell. As a private person, I was highly uncomfortable with having to learn to love others. I was simply no good at it. But I was blessed with wonderful cell members; we grew; I grew. In spite of my shortcomings, we got big enough to split. I hated to have to do it, but we did. And now the current cell is full of new people again. I have to get to know everyone all over again, and I miss the comfort of the old cell, but without discomfort, we wouldn't have grown.
This lesson was recently reinforced. We had still gathered with all of the old cell to do combined work in distributing bread to a rental HDB block, because we didn't have enough people to cover the entire block on our own. However, the other groups had now decided that they needed to grow as well, so they were moving to some different work. My wife and I looked at our cell, and knew we didn't have enough people to continue the bread distribution on our own. Simply not possible.
But we decided to go for it anyway. Challenge our members to give up their old floors with their familiar residents, take ownership of new floors, find new volunteers of their own, and cover the whole block by ourselves. It was scary and uncomfortable. We had to ask new friends to help. We had to get to know new residents. But on the first new day of our distribution exercise? We had more volunteers than before! I almost couldn't believe it myself.
I was reminded of how Jesus fed the five thousand. Jesus had been preaching to five thousand people, and it was getting late. They were far from town, and the disciples asked Jesus to send the people home, so they could eat. Jesus said to the disciples, you feed them. They said, whaaaaat? Jesus said, go check what we've got, and they found a boy who had five loaves of bread and two fishes. Jesus took the food, gave thanks, and got the disciples to distribute the food. Miraculously, all five thousand were fed and there were twelve basketfuls of food left over.
Discomfort brings growth! But there's a special kind of discomfort where we literally have no way or ability to do what we need to do. But we do it anyway. This kind of discomfort is called, faith. Hebrews 11:1 says, "Faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see."
When we embrace this kind of... discomfort, in relinquishing our comfort about what our own resources and ability can do, then really amazing things can happen. Matthew 17:20 says, "If you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, "Move from here to there" and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you."
This kind of faith is transformational. It's not just a life philosophy that leads to a 10% better way to live. It fundamentally changes what life is. It doesn't come from human ingenuity but divine grace. I'm enjoying the ride, because it's awesome!
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