What to do in the Waiting: The Questions of Complex Transitions - Part 2

Excerpt from What to do in the Waiting Part 1 “The period of waiting in transition has been such a long long season for me. I often felt like I did as a child in the endless snowy climate of Minnesota – will summer ever come? And like a bear moving out of hibernation, I’m ecstatic to see that spring is here for me and summer on the horizon! For those in the waiting of in between: Though your winter may be long, I believe your season of summer will soon come.

In addition to praise, play and explore here is the continuation of thoughts regarding what to do in waiting: The questions of complex transitions

4. Embody my Transition - I am on a long journey to remind my mind to let my body express itself as guide and teacher. My call to action in my recent transition was to take my body on a daily walk or meet it on the mat in simple stretching exercises. I was to attend to what my body wanted to tell me - what it had been carrying all along. I would listen to its aches, moans and subtle plea to at minimum, MOVE! I became aware that everyday I am invited to participate in life in an embodied way - through my flesh and bones.

As I continued the practice of attending to the present and listening to my body’s needs, an increasing learning arose. The awareness of long-standing disembodiment or disconnectedness to my body over the course of my lifetime. I remember sitting in the doctor’s office once as a young person. I was asked by the attending doctor if the pain I was experiencing was sharp or dull. I sat dumbfounded. I had literally no idea what he was talking about. I said, “What’s the difference?” How do you explain and describe what feelings are like? When asked by my first counselor what feelings I was experiencing, I once again had no words. I was not aware of the lack of education I had received around what words went with feelings. I had no language to express the state my body was in. And yet now, many years and much education later, I’m aware I’m not that unusual.

This recent transition was different. I knew differently. I felt the whole thing different. It was intense and heavy and my body often just wanted to run. I became aware of the need to “read” “listen” and “study” what my body was trying to communicate and what I needed to do about it. A counselor friend described it this way, when we live under stress our cortisol levels are excreting much more than is sustainable to live with. That’s the loose definition of “burn out”. We literally have no hormones left when we’ve been living in a heightened state of stress. .

My body was trying to teach me, often in contradiction with my logical brain what to do or not to do. It was like listening to instructions given in an unknown foreign language. Many have said, the body instinctively knows how to move, stop for rest and breathe deeply. We stop at the end of a run or eat when we’re hungry or go to the bathroom when we need to. Yet many of us don’t speak the language of our body and DO NOT do these very basic bodily functions - breathing, eating, and resting. Especially in times of intense stress, a period of long grieving or after a trauma we must retrain our minds to listen to what are body is trying to say.

In transition, your body can be a master teacher providing great wisdom into your future direction. For years, but especially in times of stress, my body, when I listened spoke loudly through stomach pains and shoulder aches. It was crying for something to change! I just hadn’t been listening. I now credit my last transition with final decisions based on the way my body communicated to me about what I absolutely must or must not do. This became a profound way of listening and engaging in decision-making in a new way for me. How are you listening to what your body is trying to tell you in transition?

5.    Be the hope you need. Volunteer – in your greatest times of need, and especially in transition, look to give, not receive. When I think about the periods of major life transition over the course of my life, I’m grateful that several times I have had the privilege of a “holy nudge” to step outside of my own problems and serve others. I learned this hard lesson first the fall after my freshman year of college.

In April, as school was coming to a close, I received notice from the financial aide department at the end of my freshman year that funds were not accessible to me to support myself for 3 more years. I had a decision to make about how to raise or earn the amount I lacked. I decided I needed to work hard during the summer to manage the gap. Despite my best efforts and prayers, the funds were insufficient. That fall, as others returned to their dorms, I packed my belongings, said goodbye to the university and to the location in a short time I had grown to love.

As devastated as I was, I knew at the young age of 19, that I didn’t want my life to waste away. In addition to getting a full time job, I chose to explore two forms of volunteering. One of them was in the local children’s hospital in the play therapy ward. I was curious more than anything. What did that type of work look like? Would I want to do more of it in the future?

I quickly got to know many children who were hooked up to IV’s 24-hours a day. They needed frequent monitoring and multiple surgeries for complex illnesses I will never understand. My only job was to provide some form of joy and outlet for them to be children and not only “sick people”. As I carved out two hours a week for a year, I watched as some children improved and others did not. One day I arrived to work to discover, much to my surprise, my favorite child was no longer with us. The terminal diagnosis of children’s cancer took his young precious life.

I became aware in moments of volunteering like these of the fragility of life. That most of us have choices of what to do with unfortunate life circumstances. For many our pain is temporary. In my case these little children were hurting in profoundly more significant ways that I was in my transition away from college. I knew I needed to surround myself with them even for a couple of hours every week to remember that. I could offer them something I had that they did not - the ability to play; the ability to have hope. Every time I left I was more grateful for the life I had, despite it being so different and even disappointing. I, fortunately had the power to choose how I would build the narrative of my future. These children did not. My lacking became much less about a boulder of a problem on my path and more about seeing them as stones to use to build something meaningful from. What I gained from the experience of volunteering was profound gratitude and perspective of the bounty of what I did have!

In my recent season of transition I volunteered in the small ways that I could manage. I was once again afforded the gift of time, the resource everyone else wanted. I intentionally tried to move toward someone with needs on a weekly basis - whether that was through childcare, organizing, volunteering at a local charity, picking someone up from the airport or inviting someone for dinner. I didn’t have my natural energy and I REALLY didn’t feel like I had much to give, but I knew I had something small and I was always blessed in return.

I have the choice to dwell on my circumstances or to focus on making the most of what I have been given. Many times it is a subtle shift that changes me - when I extend myself to others I focus on what is true, honorable, right, pure, lovely and admirable.

Nevada Museum of Art

Nevada Museum of Art

6. Keep showing up. As simple as this might sound, being present was the most profound and difficult thing I felt God nudging me towards.

When people felt uncertain and maybe even unsafe, the reminder was to show up. In showing up, I had to face people I really had no love in my heart for. Then I had to face my heart. I was invited to show up to understand my part. Show up to learn what to do next. Show up to be a part of the conversation. Show up to see where I was no longer a part of the conversation.

Likewise, I felt challenged to talk with others about all the ambiguities: “What’s next?” “What are you doing with your time?”. “Showing up” was my daily act of obedience.

In showing up, several things happened. I gained greater perspective outside of the one-sided stories I would tell myself and the small world I was creating. I once again received blessings. I met new people and gained new understanding of the way forward.

I was repeatedly faced with the graciousness of God’s timing and the lack of my knowledge about the bigger picture.

When we are faced with long periods of waiting we have the gift of deciding how we are going to posture ourselves. We have the choice to learn the lessons that only can be learned in transition. May we be bold in each of these difficult places to hear what we are to glean from this unique winter season.

What do I do in the waiting? - Part 1

waiting

What do I do in the Waiting?

The questions of complex transitions

As we were wrapping up an initial consultation, a potential client recently asked me, “So, what do I do now while I wait?” We had spent the previous 45 minutes talking about the difficult transition they were in & the lack of fit for the husband while the wife was thriving. I gathered a sense of expansive understanding to the openness of both time and untapped energy that permeated his question. I was invited to an internal pause. While I could answer with a quick appeasement something like, “Wait with intentionality!” I felt a deep sense that his question came from a different place than a child fighting off boredom while waiting for a guest to arrive. This question was likely a daily, hourly, nagging, question in his mind. And not just a question related to time but something so much more compelling. I imagined underlying the simple question of “What should I do in the waiting?” resonated a sound like a base drum - a deeper, harder to answer question about core identity and purpose.

I sensed that without purposeful response, this unwelcome intrusion of a question would not easily go away. I couldn’t help but empathize with intense sadness. I felt this conversation ignite in me a painful visceral, not-all-that-distant memory and response. I felt the question in my gut. I resonated with the desperate longing to be useful. To be noticed for one’s unique skillset. The natural inborn desire to be invited to a table to share a unique point of view. To be asked to show up with a voice that is welcomed. To contribute the expression of creation that only my unique fingerprints could create.

I couldn’t help but feel that this question daily nagged my transition companion. And yet like any coach might do, I turned his question into an opportunity to dig deeper. “What do you think you should do in the waiting? And secondly…what does your wife think you should do?

It wasn’t meant to be a cop-out. Coaches are often asked questions back; often the ones the client doesn’t want to answer. And yet on the flip side many coaches go into a coaching or care profession waiting for the moment to be asked his/her opinion. If we’re honest we’d rather be consultants and give quick answers and we’d rather share ideas and solutions! Yet here I sat together with my fellow sojourner, in the complexity of his painful transition without a lot of answers and certainty of what to do next. Yet I could respond with a presence of familiarity and a knowing it won’t last forever to validate and feel alongside him the deep pain in the not knowing and in the waiting in between. 

And now here as I write, I suppose I wear the hat of a consultant, not as much a coach. I share my ideas a little more openly at first with just my computer…not sure where they’ll land or who will read them or relate. My story not that unlike his - consisted of that redundant and not-always-answered question “God, what do you want me to do in the waiting?” For almost 2 full years (if not longer), it was for me a daily gnawing at my core identity question especially when the calendar was empty and the phone didn’t ring. I felt alone - people don’t really like to talk about that in-between place of isolation and the reality of what it actually looks like to be waiting. And yet, in hindsight, I recognize I often did hear a response. I heard an invitation to new disciplines. Over the course of many months and years, despite long days of silence, these are a few of the disciplines I was invited to discover in my time of long waiting:

7 playlists I created in 2017-2019 coinciding with each of the 6 transition themes. Find them on iTunes & Spotify “The Way Between - Limitations”

7 playlists I created in 2017-2019 coinciding with each of the 6 transition themes. Find them on iTunes & Spotify “The Way Between - Limitations”

 1.    Praise – Praise turns my heart on. I hear the mandate of scripture: “In all things give thanks”. “This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it.” Noticing the beauty in life, the good that I’ve been given, takes intentionality and discipline. And yet here my heart, like David’s in Psalms does not want to rejoice. I hear the voices of literary mentors say, “Thanks is what multiples joy and makes any life large”. I admit, it does not come natural for me. So I turn to those who’ve penned lyrics of pain and married them with the life-giving instruments of worship acknowledging a place of surrender. I listened, and listened some more to the hymns and to the modern day poets give their doubts and unmet longings to God in praise. Time after time as if this was my prescription - this posture of worship changed me. It calmed me like unlike anything else. It brought me to a place of holding open all that I could not control. It’s not all about me or my unmet longings. God is in the business of transforming my heart by giving me this grand pause. Can I see it as a gift and give it back to him in worship? He held me in it and he performed healing in places of my heart that really needed some deep surgery.

“Thankfulness is what multiplies joy and makes any life large”-Ann Voskamp

2.    Play – I learned to embrace, like my children, the present. My propensity being a forward-facing and actively moving thought life, the future is where my mind and body naturally want to go. The present can often feel stifling & uncomfortable to me. Yet I recall my word for that year - excitable! Not a word anyone has ever used to describe me!! Yet when I think about a person who is excitable, I conjure up positive thoughts of people that I love being around! In hindsight, I recognize I was being invited into a practice of mindfulness. A call to notice and to enjoy the every moment. A call to attend to my inner child and just enjoy what or who was in front of me. This invitation was for me was a summoning to play! Turn life into a joyful game. Play encouraged me to stop to embrace the joy of just being and not focus on doing anything or becoming anything. Whether through an Uno game with my 5 year-old or a more adult game of strategy, drawing, wrestling, or just responding to enter a pool with a cannonball instead of a careful wade. I was (and am) continually implored to enjoy my life in the moment even with all its pain and uncertainty.

3.    Explore – be curious and remain open. As I began to write I just brain-dumped my thoughts on paper day after day. I wasn’t strict about it. And I didn’t intend for it to go anywhere. And yet as I kept writing I felt like my words gained some momentum. Maybe not worth sharing with others. But maybe. I surrounded myself with my spiritual and literary mentors; those who spoke eloquently and articulately with words on paper and poets of music like I mentioned before.

When I got stuck I would read. I read what inspired me to think differently, grander thoughts. I read people who played with words in a way I had not been comfortable doing. I explored new ways of adding color to thoughts that I felt only others knew how to do. In this I stumbled and I stuttered and it was clunky. But I persisted and I gained new life every time I did. I explored new creation through exercise and movement and I explored new ways of thinking. I took what I already knew and I expanded on that pushed boundaries of my imagination in a way that I had felt stifled in in the past. What was provoked in me was the designer side of me that had been dormant. In that creative, playful, exploratory space came the creation of what is now my primary work - The Art of Transition.

The period of waiting in transition has been such a long long season for me. I often felt like I did as a child in the endless snowy climate of Minnesota – will summer ever come? And like a bear moving out of hibernation, I’m ecstatic to see that spring is here for me and summer on the horizon! And for those in the waiting of in between: Though the winter is long, I believe your season will come.

—to be continued

 “If all I know of harvest is that it’s worth my patience. Then if you’re not done working, God I’m not done waiting”

 “Seasons” by Hillsong Worship

Listen:

Like the frost on a rose 

Winter comes for us all

Oh how nature acquaints us 

With the nature of patience

Like a seed in the snow

I’ve been buried to grow

For your promise is loyal

From seed to sequoia

I know | Though the winter is long even richer | The harvest it brings | Though my waiting prolongs even greater | Your promise for me like a seed | I believe that my season will come

————————

Lord I think of Your love

Like the low winter sun

As I gaze I am blinded 

In the light of Your brightness

Like a fire to the snow

I’m renewed in Your warmth

Melt the ice of this wild soul

Till the barren is beautiful

I know | Though the winter is long even richer | The harvest it brings | Though my waiting prolongs even greater | Your promise for me like a seed | I believe that my season will come

———

I can see the promise | I can see the future | You’re the God of seasons | I’m just in the winter | If all I know of harvest | Is that it’s worth my patience | Then if You’re not done working | God I’m not done waiting | You can see my promise | Even in the winter | Cause you’re the God of greatness | Even in a manger | All I know of seasons | Is that you take your time | You could have saved us in a second | Instead you sent a child

The barren is beautiful

The barren is beautiful

Though the winter is long even richer

The harvest it brings

Though my waiting prolongs even greater

Your promise for me like a seed

I believe that my season will come

And when I finally see my tree

Still I believe there’s a season to come

Like a seed You were sown

For the sake of us all

From Bethlehem’s soil

Grew Calvary’s sequoia