Getting Ready for Change

 We can make our plans, but the Lord determines our steps.  Proverbs 16:9

All of us have wanted to change something in our lives.  We make plans; we get information and tools and learn what must be done.  If we are smart, we engage community support in the area of change we need.  I propose, though, that we miss the most important element in the process, which can sideline us if we don’t attend to it.  We miss being ready for and ready to accommodate the emotions of a change process.

How do you feel about the problem?

How do you feel about feeling that way?

How do you feel about problem-solving through this particular problem?

How do you feel about feeling that way?

How might you feel about achieving success?

How do you feel about feeling that way?

This is why we often fail:  we don’t honor those feelings let alone navigate them, which leads to failure as we abandon the process because we are so uncomfortable with the feelings that attend change. 

I know all have done it because I know that people know what to do … but do not do it. You have seen it; you have done it;

 What happens is that we are faced with new information that doesn’t fit our scheme at all!  The superficial facts and acts seem obvious enough, but the emotional construct needed to make change feels daunting.  We don’t know how to let our stomach hurt.  Part of the solution is to learn to stay uncomfortable when we are solutioning.

In faith practices, discovery and growth  is sometimes called “liminal” spaces, the spaces of waiting for change.  Traditionally, the liminal space is the space of transformation.  It’s a waiting area filled with anticipation, disorientation, uncomfortableness, maybe even fright.

The extreme example is the Saturday after “good” Friday.  Jesus is dead and the disciples have no idea what is happening.  They don’t know that Sunday is coming, and they are in a terrifying space of reorientation…and towards what future, they don’t know.  I can only imagine what that 48 hours was like, but I imagine the room was flooded with dark emotions of grief, fear, despair.  I imagine the sobbing and wailing.  I imagine the ferocious need to save themselves, yet their future seeming to be in complete disarray. 

Their lives had to go on, but how?  How does one solution in the midst of pain?  Could it be possible that those dark emotions could be teachers or guides?  Could the primal howl of existential suffering actually be healing or transformative?  Have you ever screamed out of sheer frustration of fear?  What if that was healing?

The disciples had to face in a larger sense than when we are in a liminal space how to navigate not just next steps, but new identity and purpose.  All they held true had collapsed (although we know Jesus would reorient that collapse).  What if, in less terrorizing moments comparatively, that is true for us as we make change?  What will we become?  Can we let Jesus reorient our path (determine our steps)? What will that liminal space teach us?

Squint ahead and see that God has determined our steps.  He knows the way.