One of the hardest parts about transition is managing our big feelings about CHANGE.
If you’ve ever had to move homes, change jobs, relocate, get married, lose a loved one, become a parent… you’ll know what I mean.
Maybe it’s culture, maybe it’s a sense of shame or fear of how others perceive us.
But more often than not, I’ve noticed how so many of us prefer to hide or stuff what we feel because feeling BIG emotions about BIG transitions can at times feel scary.
When we go back to our generational roots, many of us have been brought up to believe emotions are a sign of weakness.
Once, when I’d shared that I’d gone for therapy & inner healing to process some hard things we’d gone through moving 12 times over 4 countries in our first 8 years of marriage, I remember being told that I must not have been fit enough to serve in the mission field then.
Now that I’m older, I truly believe that the more we embrace those big feelings during times of big change, instead of (falsely) interpreting that emotions reveal our lack of faith or lack of dependence on God, the more authentic our relationship with God and others will actually be.
After losing sleep last night from some conversations about our transitions, I decided to talk our children through some of the:
1. Big changes to come
2. Their feelings around them
3. And what we could do to ease those transitions.
Lately, as more people ask us about our transition, I can’t help but feel unwanted anxiety creeping up on me.
There are times I don’t really want to explain why we are moving when we don’t have work permits, housing, salaries, a good school waiting for us.
God has always required we step out in faith first in our lives. Why would this time be any different?
But I’m learning, that it’s important to order our inner worlds and anchor our souls in Jesus so firmly that no turbulence of the outer world can shake it.
This requires deep intentionality, every day.
“It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own. But the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. “
– Ralph Waldo Emerson, quoted in “Ordering Your Private World” by Gordan Macdonald