Transition meditations.....

 Transitions are happening which has made my blog posts a bit quiet.  It is hard to write about moving things.  Where is the pause button where we look back, look ahead and be fully present in a season of transition?  When do we know when transition has completed?  It is a weird word and an uncomfortable season.  

Jeremiah is done with high school.  He has finished baseball and officially signed off on all of it.  He is looking ahead to college at SDSU and we are starting to talk about what to bring to Brookings!  Isaac is on vacation with his sweetie in Mexico and will come back to work a few weeks, then move out of our house and back on campus at Dordt.  Claire and Jonah have moved to Sioux Falls and she is figuring out adulthood and married life there, and will start her Masters classes online in August.  She texts me once in awhile for recipes when she is cooking dinner.  

Late summer seems to beat a drum of transitions and it is exciting and stressful and hopeful and regretful and so much more.  In my family, the younger kids are ready for school to start and are getting crabby and bored and demanding.  I prefer content and full of creative ideas and grateful.  My season of transition would wait a few weeks so that I could enjoy a couple more weeks of the dog days of summer with them, to do all of the lazy day things and savor it all.....before we start organizing their wardrobes and going shopping....but we don't seem to transition at the same pace.  That makes transition hard.  It does not seem to be a relational concept.  I struggle with that.  

My professional life is also in a season of radical transformation that calls upon all of my coping skills to manage.  We are physically moving from one building to another and I have done the same work from the same office for over 20 years.  Our leadership is also changing.....transition is emotionally and mentally taxing.  

In my church, I am part of the sending team for our missionaries.  They are also in transition....literally.  Some are on a vacation, some are waiting to go and some are actually moving.  I hold space and purpose and compassion and energy for that.  Transition is a big deal.  

I see children struggle with transition all the time.  Parents are forcing them on to the next thing and the child isn't ready....a battle ensues and results in a tantrum and lots of drama.  The child feels stripped of any control.  The parent feels ashamed and powerless....transitions are a big deal.  

If structure and routine are good for regulation, then transition is the challenge.  That is how it is for me and for me it makes me feel like I am standing on a wobbly air mattress in the water.  I have a sense of balance but I don't know how long I can hold it there.  It is equal parts exciting and frustrating and intimidating and down-right annoying.  It is not scary for me....just disruptive.  It is scary for others.  I want to find ways to help them get through transition back to structure and routine and regulated because balancing on the air matress in the water is not a way of life.  

I am crowd-sourcing ideas on how to cope with the anxieties that go with seasons of transition.  I have received some pretty great insight already and would love to hear more.  I am governed by a spritual discipline and internal wiring for compassion therefore things like this matter to me more than they may matter to the average human.  Send me your reflections!