Transitions
They come in different shapes and sizes.
Sometimes they arrive as a matter of intent. From a desire to seek something new, to take on new challenges, to grow.
Sometimes they take you by surprise. It forces itself on you, unwanted and unexpected.
Sometimes they express optimism and hope, sometimes they rob you of that optimism and hope
Its tough to know how to express this one in my life beyond the simple words, it’s not what I wanted, but it is where I find myself.
And with it comes so much loss.
A loss of identity.
A loss of security and stability.
A loss of a job that has afforded me healing and a rhythm of life over the past 11 years.
A loss of faces, routines, sights, community that have been important facets of my life. Losses that are permanent.
Losses that one has to deal with while carrying the mental, emotional, and physical weight of everything that brought you to this point.
It’s a reminder of the ways life can snap its fingers and threaten to erase all the things you place your hope in. The ways it threatens to shake up your sense of confidence in the things that matter, in the things that mean something. The way it can cloud the beauty and the joy.
It’s a reminder of the way the world works.
The transient nature of these things we call jobs.
The ugliness of power systems and conflict.
The reality of how the natural world works behind the beauty, threatening to tell you that when you aren’t strong enough, you don’t survive.
And yet, as my last day reminded me of, it can also represent a microcosm of how beauty and hope do coexist within the ugliness.
A school full of kids lining up outside to wave me off on my final run
Kids I’ve journied with since they were young sharing their memories
Kids using their gifts talents to create wonderful keepsakes
Sharad tears. Shared laughter. Hugs. Promises. Prayers. Notes. Messages.
I don’t know how I manage this transition looking forward. I don’t know that this tension ever truly goes away.
But I do know that I have experienced both.
The pictures posted with this reflection bear witness to this.
And, where i can gain perspective, there is a sense that beauty and hope arrive in necessary response to the ugliness, affording us the ability to seize intent from the unwanted thing that was thrust upon us.
My devotional from Wright’s book On Earth As it Is in Heaven this morning felt timely. It is a book that journies through the liturgical seasons of the church using his larger body of work. It is a word for “Christmas”, that time that reflects the sense of newness we claim from living in the “time inbetween”. A time in which we declare the truth that Jesus has done something new, and that we are living in this newness- the kingdom of God has arrived and the forces of Sin and Death have been defeated. But we also see, as Wright calls it, the Powers of Sin and Death still at work in our lives and in this world. That is the tension we carry into this thing we call existence.
Speaking of new beginnings in light of the symbolism of Gods 7 days of creation, Wright says,
“The sabbath was the regular signpost pointing forward to Gods promised future, and Jesus was announcing that the future to which the signpost had been pointing had now arrived in the present…
Something new is happening; a new time has been launched; different things are now appropriate. Jesus has a sense of rhythm to his work, a short rhythm in which he will launch God’s kingdom, the Gods-in charge project, and complete it in the most shocking and dramatic symbolic act of all.”
page 237 (On Earth as in Heaven, Wright)
The Stories of my Life 