Transitions

Today I am thinking about transitions. Recently, some changes were made in my chaplain residency, and I find myself in transition from what was comfortable and familiar to what feels uncomfortable and unfamiliar. No matter how much I like change and the challenge of something new, I realize that the transitional period is a time of grieving the loss of what was and the embracing of what is. It is a paradoxical dilemma. I want to have the present but I don't want to release the past. There is something in the familiar that I want to bring with me into the change. It is my comfort, my ease, my peace. The transition disturbs all of that. Certainly I know that I will eventually feel comfortable, at ease, and peaceful. It is the meantime, the threshold space, the moving place that leaves my feet feeling unsteady and wobbly. It is the norm of life. Loss and gain. Gain and loss. The delight of life. The grief of life.