Shifting: How to Handle Change with Grace

In modern life, most of us move at least once, if not several times during the course of our lives.  In previous generations it was more common to stay in the place we grew up and retire at the same company we started with.  Current studies show that the average time at a job in modern society is around 5 years.  Often job changes mean moving.  Learning to handle moving with grace can be a tremendous benefit to your happiness and your family’s well-being.

Time to Shift

During college, I spent some time living in Kenya.  I lived in a small slum outside of Nairobi and traveled each day by matatu (old VW buses repurposed as public transport for 15 people) to a rural school.  We spent our days teaching children hygiene. They used frayed branches as toothbrushes and had to wipe themselves with their hands after using the toilet if they didn’t bring their own toilet paper.  I’ll never forget the day I asked the children, “Where to germs come from?” They said, “Satan!”  My eyes got big, and I realized we had some basics to cover!  One of my favorite days was teaching the children how to dance the Virginia reel and kicking up red dirt as we twirled and laughed through it.  Their natural exuberance was contagious as was their curiosity.

Part way through my time there, there were some government misunderstandings, and skepticism about our work.  We were told we had to “shift.”  I had never heard of this before.  Our neighbors explained it meant, we had to move.  We had to stop working, and change apartments. I was heartbroken—I had come to love the children and I felt I had made some in-roads with teaching. Regardless, it was time to “shift.”

As I have moved many times since then—I have come to love the idea of “shifting.”  When we move, we literally do more than simply transport ourselves and our possessions from one place to another.  We change.  Just as a shift key on the keyboard changes a letter from lower-case to upper case, moving allows us to change who we are—to up level ourselves to something even better.

 

Change Will Be a Constant

We can all expect change.  We will have to move, people pass away, our health deteriorates, we lose jobs.  Even changes we want and choose can be hard; when we graduate from college and enter the work force, when we get married, when we have a baby, when we leave the work force, when our last child enters kindergarten, when we retire and the list goes on.  Change is a constant.

Don’t Resist

I find I often resist change because it is an ending—it means losing something I had, was, or wanted to be.  Even if it’s something I don’t like, knowing something is at the end brings with it some mourning. Part of letting something go, is acknowledging how much something or someone meant to you.  It’s recognizing how it’s been part of your life and imagining what life will be without it.

When we resist the emotions of disappointment, discouragement and sadness, they turn into resentment and anger.  It’s such a tremendous relief to accept a sadness.  Resistance requires a lot of mental and emotional space.  Letting it go, frees our brains and hearts to be open to how to adapt to the change and how to solve the problem.

Make Space for the Old

One way to give voice to our loss and sadness is to create rituals.  Rituals can help us acknowledge endings.  Our family has a little ritual at the end of each of our international postings.  Each child gets to list a few places that are most important to them—a favorite restaurant, school, church, a beach, a park etc.  We take a family drive and video all of our favorite and frequented places that have become part of our daily pattern in a place.  We enjoy talking about them as we drive and it’s a way of saying good-bye.   We try to do the same with people we love—plan a chance to say good-bye and acknowledge their presence in our lives.

Another way acknowledge pieces of our old lives in an on-going way is to hold “country nights.”  We include a holiday for each country we’ve lived in on our family calendar.  We celebrate our time in a particular place on the holiday for that country—we wear traditional clothing, eat local foods from that place and watch pictures from our time there.  Recently we celebrated “May Day” or “Lei Day”  for Hawaii.  We wore leis, ate Dole Whip and watched pictures from our time there.  It helps us continually bridge back to the past and commemorate our significant connections.

Don’t Indulge Sticky Sweetness

Grief is a clean emotion—it’s cathartic and healing.  Self-pity is an indulgent emotion.  There isn’t much positive that comes from it.  There is a fine line between mourning and becoming a victim.  I love the way CS Lewis describes this tricky space.  In “A Grief Observed,” a book he wrote after his wife died he says, “I almost prefer the moments of agony. These are at least clean and honest. But the bath of self-pity, the wallow, the loathsome sticky-sweet pleasure of indulging it–that disgusts me.”  We need the catharsis of processing our emotions and acknowledging them.  However, once that has been accomplished, continuing to “indulge” in the “sticky-sweet pleasure” of our self-pity becomes harmful.  It is when we cross this line that it’s time to channel our inner Elsa and “Let it go.”

I find the time I most want to indulge in the sticky-sweet pleasure of self-pity is a few week to a few months after we move.  It’s takes tremendous energy to start fresh somewhere, particularly when it is in an unfamiliar place, culture and in an unknown language.  Making friends takes time.  At first everything is new and fresh, and then the newness wears off and the difficulty sets in.  It’s when everything seems “hard” in our new home that my brain wants to whine and indulge in what we’ve left behind.   It’s beyond the feeling of loss of our last home—it’s all the drama my brain is offering me about creating the new life and how hard it is.  This is when it’s time to let go.  Staying in the self-pity keeps us spinning our wheels.  We just dig deep ruts instead of moving forward.

Create a Vision

One of the things I find has helped me keep from spinning my wheels, is to create a vision of what I want our life to look like in our new place.  I try to fill the void of the old with something new.  One of our favorite things to do is to make a bucket list for each place we live—places we want to go and things we want to do while we live there.  Often we even map out trips to nearby locations and when we will take them.

I love working out the details of the flow of our new home…who will share a room, which door will we come into, what will each child’s chores and family contributions will be.  I love to research opportunities for our family to contribute in our new community.  I feel like it’s easier to start new family patterns in a new place.  There aren’t the old patterns in place.  Everyone is shifting mindsets and starting new family plans pairs well with a move.

I love to dream big—I love to think about who I want to be in our new place. Some of the thoughts I have had include “I want to be an on-time person in this new place.”  “I want to be more balanced with self-care in my new home.” “I want to be deliberate with spending.” Shifting is a bonus new beginning.

It’s hard to create amazing things without have dreamt them up first.  Knowing what we are going helps us leave things behind more easily.  It also gives us a template and momentum to begin creating a new life.

Creating

Even if we have mourned and visualized a new future, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed with moving.  It’s a lot of work logistically and emotionally to start over.  Just the boxes and re-organization alone are overwhelming, not to mention meeting new friends, finding new places of worship, and stores to obtain what we need.  Often when we feel overwhelmed our natural inclination is to consume.  We eat more, we watch more Netflix, we indulge in anger or irritation.  We look at others and expect them to reach out to us—we want to consume their friendship. These things cause us to feel a temporary relief, but don’t address what we really crave which is happiness in our new life.  When we feel the urge to consume, we can create instead.  We can begin creating organization in our home, we can begin reaching out to others to invite them over to create new relationships, we can begin creating the person we want to be in our new home.  It is creating that will fulfill our deepest cravings for peace.

Edit Your Brain

Often our biggest enemies and intruders in creation are our own thoughts.  It’s common to say things to ourselves that we would never tell someone else.  “This will never work.”  “It will never be as good.”  “What was I thinking?” “Why did we do this?”  “I’ll never make friends as good as I had before.” “I hate it here.”  Ironically, these thoughts sabotage our ability to make our move a good experience.

Changing our thoughts can provide the momentum to create the new life we want. We can replace negative thoughts, with thoughts like “I got this.”  “I don’t know how this will all work out, but I know it will.”  “I have faith.”  “I’m excited to see how this all works out.”  “Hard is good.”  These types of thoughts give me so much more confidence and energy to do the work of creating something new. Sometimes that sticky sweetness of self-pity seems so tempting, but being willing to set it aside and to do something new is so much sweeter.

Shifting Into Action

It means introducing myself over and over again our first few months.  I try not to wait for others to reach out to me, I take the responsibility of seeking people out and getting to know them. We have people over to dinner.  We invite friends over for playdates. I plan the first few times I go anywhere that I will probably get lost and it will take a long time to figure out the navigation, parking etc.  It usually DOES take a long time, but I expected it so I’m not frustrated.  On particularly difficult days, I try to find humor in our situation and tell the events in the most dramatic way possible at family dinner or to a friend.  Laughing about it is almost like an escape valve that lets of the pressure.  There are always setbacks.  I try to plan on them—lots of them!   But the more I get out and begin creating the positive momentum the more courage I gain to keep creating.

The process of change is messy and frustrating.  The process of mourning, letting go and creating new is not a neat step ladder process–it’s all mixed up at times.  Sometimes I experience all of them in the same day or the same hour!   No matter where I find myself in the process, when I view it all in the context of shifting to something new, something better it gives me hope and courage to keep trying.

Shift with Grace

What is a change in your life right now?

1.  Think of change as a chance to up-level yourself like the shift key on the keyboard.
2.  Envision the new, but make space for the old (rituals).
3.  Don’t get stuck in the sticky sweetness of self-pity.
4.  Start creating.

Are you my mother? Re-Calibrating After Loss

The people we love become part of us, and losing them means losing part of your identity.  Trying to adjust to life after loss means we often feel unsteady almost like a chair without a leg…we know we’re missing something and it’s hard to function correctly.  It’s normal to feel this way, and important to recognize what role the person played in our lives. Often loss makes that poignantly clear.  Grieving is essential.   However, learning how to function and re-calibrate after grieving is crucial to finding hope and healing after loss.  This is part of my story of re-calibrating after losing my mother.

Losing My Mother

I was living in Beijing, China when I received a phone call on a Saturday morning from my sister.  “Mom isn’t doing well—the hospice nurse thinks she only has a few days left.”  I hung up the phone.  My mother had been battling cancer for 4 years.  I knew she wasn’t doing well, but I hadn’t realized the end would come so quickly.  I was panicked I wouldn’t make it back before she slipped away.  I boarded a plane that morning and sobbed all 24 hours to Denver.  Bless my sweet seat companions.  Every time I had a layover, I called.  She’s still here.  I didn’t relax until I had her cheek to mine and I was squeezing her hand.

It was a bit of a shock to see her so gaunt and wasted and in a hospice bed in the middle of the living room.  The last time I had seen her, she and I had gone for a walk around the trails in our neighborhood.  Now just breathing was laborious for her.  Each night for the next 6 days I wondered if it would be her last.  I was lucky enough to get to minister to her—to rub her feet, to read her biblical text, to lay next to her, to laugh with her.  I tried to soak in every minute and detail of her presence up until the moment she took her last breath.   For more on losing my mom see  God Loves Broken Things:  Accepting our Brokenness.

I did not anticipate the emptiness and longing I would feel as I watched my mother lie lifeless on the bed or be wheeled out of our home.  The day of the funeral, I was numb.  People were so wonderful and so supportive, but it all seemed like a bit of a blur.  It seemed surreal that I was at my own mother’s funeral, shaking hands of people we loved, laying a flower on her casket. And then it was time to leave.  Her earthly remains disappeared.

Looking for My Mother

I knew she was gone, but I still needed her.  By default, I still kept going to the space she occupied for me emotionally and would find her gone.  I felt adrift and off-balance.  Some days I’d pick up the phone to call my mom…..and remember she wasn’t there.    I had always written little ideas or funny things I wanted to share with mom on post-it notes around the house to tell her next time I talked to her.  I found myself still writing them for a while.  But then I stopped.

My mother was my emotional calibrator.  When I needed encouragement or to laugh about something humiliating, I could almost hear her voice as she’d quote Anne of Green Gable, “Girl you do beat all.”   When I went home, I would re-charge my emotional and personal history battery. It helped me remember who I was and how I wanted to be.  But now I just slowly lost battery and wasn’t sure where to recharge.

Where should I look to find a model of the woman I wanted to be?  The mother I hoped to become?  She was gone.  I watched other women her age, but not having access to their thoughts and personal doings, I felt at a loss.

Are You My Mother?

I knew I still needed anchoring and mothering.  But I didn’t know where to find it.  I felt like the little bird in the PD Eastman children’s book, “Are you my mother?” At times I looked for her in others.   I sometimes tried to find her in my husband, my sisters, my dad, my friends.  They were all amazing, and sometimes they did fill her space in my soul for a moment. I read her journals, I read books I knew she had read and loved.  I made her recipes.  Other times I looked for her in my memories or in her legacy.  What would she do if she were here. Sometimes looking for her helped, but other times it made the empty space she had occupied feel larger and hollower.

Losing Me

I felt my new identity was wrapped up in her passing.  I felt disconnected from people who didn’t know about it.  Little things un-related to my mom felt heavier and harder.  I was irritated more easily with my family and others.  They were not my mother.  And I felt resentful they weren’t.  Of course it wasn’t their fault, or even mine—it was part of the grieving process.
It was a dark time.  I cried myself to sleep many nights.  The emotions would well up at strange times—like a song on the radio, or her handwriting sprawled on top of a recipe I was making that said “delicious.”

I remember sometimes the feelings were so raw it was difficult to own them.  I was a busy mom with a new baby, two older children with their own needs, I was preparing for an international move and trying to carry on with normal life responsibilities.  Life kept going, but the construct of life I had always depended on wasn’t there.  I had to keep going but with more heaviness.  Sometimes I would shove the difficult feelings down when I couldn’t process them. I wanted to process my grief.  I wanted to own it.  But part of me didn’t know how.

Significant days like Mother’s Day, the day of her passing, and her birthday were the hardest.  I remember sometimes being sick of the pain and wanting it to stop.  And, then other times not ever wanting to feel “over it,” as it seemed like that would diminish the significance of the loss.  I wanted to find my mother, but I didn’t know how.  For more on grief see  Hope Is the Thing: Getting Through Grief.

Finding New Mothers

I Found My Mother in Me
In this longing and looking for my mother, and often not finding her, I discovered something.  She was not the only source of love and strength and peace.  I realized I am stronger and braver than I thought.  But I had to walk farther than I’d ever walked before to know it.  In the midst of an international move to Mexico I found my mother—in me.  I remembered the grit she showed as she re-landscaped our front yard one summer, or walked herself into another chemo treatment.  But I had to summon the courage to try.  I found the courage and strength to walk by children to school past drug deals and guards with machine guns.  I found the courage to take my children to doctors in a foreign language and how to do white-knuckled Mexico City driving.

I Found My Mother in God.
I found that He is closer and more merciful than I knew.  But I had to reach out and remove the obstructions of pride and laziness preventing me from feeling his love.  I had my 3rd daughter just a few months after my mother’s passing.  I needed my mother.  I wanted her there.   The spirit helped replace the longing and acute pain with peace.   When I needed a confidant I began falling to my knees to pray to my father who loves me perfectly.  Isn’t that really our journey here anyway—to learn to fall to our knees?

I Found My Mother in Others.
I found that they are more loving and vulnerable than I expected.  But I have to let them come close to my heart and I have to change my expectations.  No one will ever fill that entire role.  But people can fill tiny bits of her.  When we arrived to Mexico City, we had no furniture.  My husband and I were ordering furniture for our home for the first time since we were married.  I scoured design websites and looked for deals.  I was so excited when it finally came—I wanted someone to be excited with me.  I called my neighbor downstairs and she came up to celebrate with me.  It was just a little space she held, but it was enough.

The absence of my mother, left a hollow part of me.  I still miss her fiercely.  I will never fully replace her, but in trying to fill that space, I have found so many mothers… a closer relationship to God, deeper friendships, courage, and so much personal growth.

Re-Calibrating After Loss

Mourning is something each of us do many times in our lives—not just when we lose someone we love, but when we lose a job, lose part of our health, move or a friendship changes etc.   It’s important to grieve and recognize the absence.  Often it is that noticing that gives us a deeper appreciation for what we’ve lost.  After those feelings have become less acute, it can be so healing to begin noticing the amazing compensatory blessings God places in our paths to help fill those spaces.  He does fill them.

Fill the Gaps

What loss have you experienced?

1.  Consider writing down how life has changed because of that loss, what is missing with that person or that thing gone?  It can be so healing to recognize what a significant contribution that person had.  Often it’s hard to fully realize without losing something.

2.  Can you see any way it has been filled in different ways?  If you aren’t sure, become curious and begin looking.  You may find some compensatory blessings.