This past month has been a month of transitions.  My oldest child started college, the next youngest is now in grade 12 and preparing for post-secondary applications, and my youngest has started high school (and has brought a smile to all of our faces as we watch him open up and engage with new energy and enthusiasm).  It has also been a time of transitioning with jobs and personal relationships, ministry and extended family.  The season has begun to transition as well – summer to autumn, shorter days, cooler nights and the leaves changing colour (my favourite time of the year). 

Transitions. 

They are a part of life.  Sometimes they can be fairly easy, natural and beautiful.  Other times they can be harder and more disruptive…painful even.  Much of it depends on how readily we embrace the coming changes that transitions lead us into.  As I said to one of my children, transitions can be like swimming in a cold lake – some like to dive right in and get over the initial shock as quickly as possible. Some like to ease in, and though it takes longer to fully immerse, it seems easier to handle.  In the end, both are swimming and that was the goal.  Sometimes we will find ourselves doing both in separate situations – easing into one thing while diving into another.

Some of it depends on the people around us.  What can make it harder is when someone else decides for you what you should do and then expects you to do it.  They might throw you in thinking you should be able to handle it, or come splashing all around you, or insist that you take it slow when you know you need to just take the plunge.  There always seems to be some that think they know what’s best for you, what you can and cannot do, who you are and who you are not, and what you can contribute and what you can’t. They are often only considering one part of you (for good or for bad), not seeing the whole of you. 

The ones that you can count on are the ones still with you on the other side, cheering you on, regardless of what you do or don’t do, and regardless of what it means for them.  There are enough people like that who we can turn to if we are willing to see them though it seems they are fewer in number than the others.  Yet, even just one person can be all we need in the moment.  Each of us in our family has been faced with these challenges and opportunities and both kinds of people over the past month and each of us has needed to respond in our own way, while staying mindful of one another, and staying open to the unexpected knowing that God will often surprise us.

It can be messy and unclear at times.  Actually, it’s often messy and unclear.  But there are some things that are pretty certain.  It is these that we move toward.  The things that are clear are the things God has given us to direct our pathway, align our hearts, and encourage us that He is indeed present and active, attending to the details, seeing the whole of who we are, not letting good or bad distort his vision.  The certainties might be minimal at times, but they are all we need to keep moving.   They are never completely absent; we can always name them specifically if we truly look for them.  Generalities mean nothing and are to be ignored. 

I wrote again in my journal today, that the very breath I breathe is a certain witness that God is present, a reminder that He is the one bringing and sustaining life, actively perpetuating grace breath after breath.  We like to quietly tell each other in our family…”breathe”.  It’s become our way of helping each other to remember God is in our midst bringing us from one thing to the next and He has it all figured out.  Move with what is certain.  Leave the uncertainties with Him.

If we find ourselves perpetually in transition, it may be that God is solidifying within us the certainty of Him; He is the only constant that we really need.  Most people around us won’t agree.  They look for us to figure out our place, settle in and fulfill our purpose.  Sounds good on paper but often we discover we have merely fallen into a rut, no longer open to new things or new activity, and trying to lock in the people around us for our own affirmation that we got it right.  Transitions reveal them as much as they do us.  If they stick with us, we celebrate.  If they move away from us, we pray.  God listens and answers.

Transitions…ultimately they are not as much about doing new things as they are about peeling back the layers of who we are and showing what we really believe about God and others and ourselves.