Transition Pain
I stepped off the airplane with a knot in my stomach. After 15+ hours of flight time, we landed in a new country and a new life. An overseas assignment for my husband’s job meant exciting international travel, adventure, and new experiences. But it also meant an uncomfortable and sometimes even painful transition away from our beloved friends, excellent schools, church family, our home, and trusted community. It also meant changing my work schedule and communication challenges with aging parents and our college-aged son, now 16 time zones away. This was on top of the already high stress associated with moving, ranked by 61% of people as more stressful than divorce or starting a new job. In fact, 30% of people report feeling more stress during a move than they did on their wedding day. No wonder my hands were sweaty, and my heart raced as we picked up our luggage and drove to our new house.
It’s hard to prepare for the tension of conflicting emotions that often come with significant life changes like moving to a new place, starting a new job, adding another child to the family, or taking on a new leadership role. Those around you are quick to congratulate, encourage, and help build the positive energy that comes with everything new and exciting. But there’s less conversation about the grief process that comes with leaving things behind, even when they are things we’ve outgrown or know we must release to grab on to something even better. Those of us who have weathered a significant transition or two in life know that if managing the change process is a logical science, handling the conflicting emotions attached to change is an undervalued art.
As we stood in the doorway of our old home for the last time, staring at the empty living room and blank walls, my daughter cried tears of genuine sadness. This was her childhood home and the only house she could remember in her 12-year lifetime. At that moment, the novelty of the new house waiting for her was drowned out by her deep grief of leaving her old one. In the past, I would have attempted to pull her up, dry her eyes, and convince her not to be sad. Now, I know you can be sad about the old and excited about the new at the same time. So, I held her hand, let her cry, and instead, cried along with her.
Just the day before, I’d cried on the shoulder of my best friend of ten years. She was my local bestie, buddy, confidant, and, most importantly, only 10 minutes away at any given time. We cried because we both knew that things would now be different - still close friends, but with a 7,000-mile chasm between us, would we still have the same level of intimacy as before? Would I be replaced in her heart with a new, local friend? Would I be forgotten? I clung to her and cried because as much as I knew that leaving was the right decision for our family, it was still hard. I was excited, but I was also scared. I was ready for adventure but also nervous about creating a new life somewhere strange and unknown. I held all these emotions in one heart as the tears fell, and my wise friend held me tight and cried along with me.
An interesting thing happens when you stop trying to untangle your conflicting emotions and hold them together like I do now. Like live wires, where grief intersects happiness, a little spark erupts that we call hope. Hope binds the entire experience together, divinely promising both healing from the pain and joy in the new opportunities to come. As you continue to hold all of your seemingly conflicting emotions, that spark ignites our faith and reminds us that God is no stranger to our broad spectrum of deep emotions. He not only designed us to experience them all but experienced them all himself in Jesus. Hebrews 11:1 describes the faith we build in these moments, growing inside us even as our hearts race in trepidation or elation about the unknown future.
Faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.
Life change is as hard as it is inevitable. Transitions come with as much fear as they do delight. But when we allow ourselves to feel it all, God joins us in our tangle. He ignites that spark of hope, comforting and cheering us on toward the next great adventure he has in store for is if we have faith.
