Dealing with transition…

After a great day off yesterday, I’m back to work this morning. I was very much in need of some time away from the office after a difficult weekend. Nothing bad happened. Everything with worship went well, but I didn’t get a lot of sleep Friday night or Saturday night because I couldn’t shut off my brain. Does that ever happen to you? It’s a very helpless feeling for me knowing that what I have on my plate the following day will require me to be mentally sharp and yet not having the ability to get the rest I need for that to happen. Some nights I just can’t shake the worry.

I’ve felt this way for several weeks during which time I’ve tried to figure out what is the source of my uneasiness. I thought to myself, “there is nothing too big on my plate right now that is burdening me. I can’t point to anything in my life and say, this is causing me stress.” Right before worship on Saturday, I sat down and wrote in my journal for a few minutes and I started thinking about all the things in my life that are about to change.

We’re moving to a new house…
We’re selling our current home…
I graduate in a few weeks…
We have a new baby that is due in August…

Now I am super excited about every one of those upcoming changes in my life, but what I’ve realized about myself is that while I love change, I don’t have a lot of patience for transition. I love the feeling of immediate change like when I rearrange my office or de-clutter my closet [which I did yesterday] but I really get anxious in the middle of change that takes time. Immediate change makes me happy, but transition makes me nervous.

I don’t really understand why it bothers me so much. Certainly, I can look at some cases in my life and point to my own selfish desire to have my way now. Yet even when I look at immediate changes that are forced upon me, I deal with that so much better than a drawn out period of transition. I feel like I can adapt to a new reality quickly, but I want to get it over with as quickly as I can.

Tomorrow, I’m going to write a little bit about how I feel like this pattern of anxiety in my life keeps me from implementing some of the healthy changes I’ve wanted to see in my life for a long time. There is one in particular that I want to write about, and encourage my friends and family to help me implement. Yesterday I was trying to think of the one change I could bring into my life that would have the most profound effect on my future. It’s the first change that I would wish for if only wishing for something could make it come true. Instead it requires a commitment to the process of transformation, and I’ll tell you what it is tomorrow.