Seasons of Transition

I remember thinking something like this the first year of our marriage: “If we can get it right this first year, we will have it made for the rest of our lives.” Okay, give me a break. I was just twenty-two. What I learned rather soon was that if we were to have the marriage we both wanted, it was going to take a lot more building time than I originally thought.

Looking back, I remember thinking many times that we had finally arrived and then something changed. It was probably somewhere after we had our second child that I realized that our marriage was going to keep going through changes. Going from no children to the first was a change. Going from one child to two was a change. Nancy going from not working outside the home when the kids were little to later starting a career was a change. My going back to school to pursue ministry after working in the family business was a change.  

The changes just kept coming and there was season after season of transition. Each season and each time of transition has had its blessings and its challenges. For us, the turning point came when we finally accepted that our married life would  go through changes and then learned to embrace those changes. Looking back, we had two choices. We could embrace each season as it came or we could try to hold on to things as they were.

Embracing transitions was not always easy but it was the right decision. It allowed us to see what God was doing and what He wanted us to do in each season and each transition. You are either in a season now or transitioning from one to another. It’s inevitable and there is joy to be found in both. The more you are able to embrace the transitions, the clearer the blessings become.