In the span of approximately one year I will: graduate college, move back to my hometown, start my first “real” job, get married, become a military wife and move away from my hometown to Maryland, move again to Kentucky four months later, and see my new husband off to war.
Gosh, I never saw this coming!
It’s a funny thing about change. I have always been mentally welcoming but practically begrudging of change. I have always been a planner- one who could not handle the unknown or be flexible enough to grasp a plan that wasn’t my own. Thankfully, God doesn’t really worry about my inflexibility- He does what he wants with my life and I get to come along for the ride.
In July of 2006 my boyfriend proposed to me. Very happily, I accepted. Sadly, just a month later we parted and returned to the drudgery of a long distance relationship—he was living in Utah while I was finishing up my last year of undergraduate study in New York City. I’m back in Utah now, and we’re reunited for the foreseeable future. Our marriage is just weeks away, and I am so thrilled with all this.
I have, however, had a few moments of severe panic. These feeling primarily focus on inadequacy within new territory. I have begun a new job and the reality that I am no longer in school anymore has only started to sink in. Instead of feeling “on top of my game” as a college senior, ready to accomplish the assignments given to me based on years of experience, I find myself in the middle of a workplace environment that is new and unrelenting. I frequently sense the urge to curl up under my desk and cry- weep, even- for the loss of my childhood. All at once these feelings overwhelm me. I won’t ever live with my parents. I won’t ever had the freedom of undergraduate school, the ease of dorm life, the comfort of home for extended periods of time.
For the first time in my life I am truly and independently as ever responsible for myself. Gulp.
Once I have these feeling, I like to find strategy to deal with them. What is so hard is that they are all very new- along with each situation I encounter. I find myself tending towards a hardness of heart and emotion. For some reason my brain believes that if I shut out the sadness, the rushes of fear, and even the excitement for change, that I’ll be dealing with all these changes in a healthier way. Fortunately, God has taken that tendency and brought it to my attention as an unhealthy coping mechanism. I have had to frequently pray that God would hold my bits and pieces together while still allowing me to FEEL. I have asked him to protect me from these feelings of inadequacy and fear, and to (please God!) turn me towards him with them instead of towards whatever I might seek to fill those holes.
While I am in the midst of feeling alternately ecstatic, nostalgic, and sad about graduating, I find that instead of welcoming those feelings and functioning while feeling them, I want to shut down. I want to order a cheeseburger with extra bacon and extra cheddar cheese, cheese fries, and a coke to fill in the places where I might feel sad or upset. I become short and often disrespectful to my parents, fiancé, and even my friends. I feel distracted and essentially end up focusing on MY problems, MY worries, and all the changes in MY life.
And there you have the problem. All of these things cause me to think of myself and how the changes are influencing me for good or bad. Assessing the change is ok, but allowing this time in my life to implode into self-pity, self-consciousness, self-anything is a problem. What God has done is give me blessing upon blessing. He has given me change as a gift and a growth area. He has also given me Himself to help deal with all of that.
A woman once said that she was so in love with her boyfriend that she had to ask God to take that love from her and hold it for her because she could not hold onto it herself without injuring herself and her beloved. This story continually echoes in my head, and I’ve realized I need God’s help with all this (imagine that). I’ve asked him to take all these feelings and hold them- the sadness, the fear, the excitement, ecstasy, and all the rest. This doesn’t mean I don’t feel them, but it means that I don’t have to rely on my human relationship to fully understand what I’m going through. I can rely on an all-powerful Creator and God to fill in my gaps of understanding, calm my fears, comfort my sadness, control my excitement.
Ultimately, I have not figured out how to deal with change other than to attempt greet it with open arms. I am fortunate in that each change I will experience is a beautiful and exciting one, even though they are hard. So for now I’ll look towards those changes and pray God will help me rise to the occasions, feel with healthy emotions, and avoid the self-focus that can hobble the good that is happening. May I and you “taste and see that the Lord is good,” even in the hours of change (Psalm 34:8).
Gosh, I never saw this coming!
It’s a funny thing about change. I have always been mentally welcoming but practically begrudging of change. I have always been a planner- one who could not handle the unknown or be flexible enough to grasp a plan that wasn’t my own. Thankfully, God doesn’t really worry about my inflexibility- He does what he wants with my life and I get to come along for the ride.
In July of 2006 my boyfriend proposed to me. Very happily, I accepted. Sadly, just a month later we parted and returned to the drudgery of a long distance relationship—he was living in Utah while I was finishing up my last year of undergraduate study in New York City. I’m back in Utah now, and we’re reunited for the foreseeable future. Our marriage is just weeks away, and I am so thrilled with all this.
I have, however, had a few moments of severe panic. These feeling primarily focus on inadequacy within new territory. I have begun a new job and the reality that I am no longer in school anymore has only started to sink in. Instead of feeling “on top of my game” as a college senior, ready to accomplish the assignments given to me based on years of experience, I find myself in the middle of a workplace environment that is new and unrelenting. I frequently sense the urge to curl up under my desk and cry- weep, even- for the loss of my childhood. All at once these feelings overwhelm me. I won’t ever live with my parents. I won’t ever had the freedom of undergraduate school, the ease of dorm life, the comfort of home for extended periods of time.
For the first time in my life I am truly and independently as ever responsible for myself. Gulp.
Once I have these feeling, I like to find strategy to deal with them. What is so hard is that they are all very new- along with each situation I encounter. I find myself tending towards a hardness of heart and emotion. For some reason my brain believes that if I shut out the sadness, the rushes of fear, and even the excitement for change, that I’ll be dealing with all these changes in a healthier way. Fortunately, God has taken that tendency and brought it to my attention as an unhealthy coping mechanism. I have had to frequently pray that God would hold my bits and pieces together while still allowing me to FEEL. I have asked him to protect me from these feelings of inadequacy and fear, and to (please God!) turn me towards him with them instead of towards whatever I might seek to fill those holes.
While I am in the midst of feeling alternately ecstatic, nostalgic, and sad about graduating, I find that instead of welcoming those feelings and functioning while feeling them, I want to shut down. I want to order a cheeseburger with extra bacon and extra cheddar cheese, cheese fries, and a coke to fill in the places where I might feel sad or upset. I become short and often disrespectful to my parents, fiancé, and even my friends. I feel distracted and essentially end up focusing on MY problems, MY worries, and all the changes in MY life.
And there you have the problem. All of these things cause me to think of myself and how the changes are influencing me for good or bad. Assessing the change is ok, but allowing this time in my life to implode into self-pity, self-consciousness, self-anything is a problem. What God has done is give me blessing upon blessing. He has given me change as a gift and a growth area. He has also given me Himself to help deal with all of that.
A woman once said that she was so in love with her boyfriend that she had to ask God to take that love from her and hold it for her because she could not hold onto it herself without injuring herself and her beloved. This story continually echoes in my head, and I’ve realized I need God’s help with all this (imagine that). I’ve asked him to take all these feelings and hold them- the sadness, the fear, the excitement, ecstasy, and all the rest. This doesn’t mean I don’t feel them, but it means that I don’t have to rely on my human relationship to fully understand what I’m going through. I can rely on an all-powerful Creator and God to fill in my gaps of understanding, calm my fears, comfort my sadness, control my excitement.
Ultimately, I have not figured out how to deal with change other than to attempt greet it with open arms. I am fortunate in that each change I will experience is a beautiful and exciting one, even though they are hard. So for now I’ll look towards those changes and pray God will help me rise to the occasions, feel with healthy emotions, and avoid the self-focus that can hobble the good that is happening. May I and you “taste and see that the Lord is good,” even in the hours of change (Psalm 34:8).
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