The Slow Season: Facing Change As It Comes

Years ago, like in high school, I watched a TV movie with my mom. We watched a lot of those. Anyway, in this one, a woman suffered an unfathomable loss.  During the days, weeks, and months after her loss, people get telling her get over it.  Even then, when the most I'd lost was my great-grandparents - family I loved but was not surprised to lose, even then, I knew getting over it would never be that simple.

Fast forward many years, and I find myself in those very shoes.

Not getting over it.

I don't cry.  That doesn't surprise me.

I do, though, let the pain hit me throughout the day.  I watch my daughter devour cottage cheese and want to tell my mom, since that just screams of her personality.  And BMX? Did I mention BMX? My son loves it, and it's easy for him. Nothing has been easy.  I want to call my mom and tell her that something finally fits for my boy.

But I can't tell her.

It's a season of change.  Those come along anyway, no matter what we do, but loss cannot help but speed along a new season.

I get into trouble when my seasons change.

I have a bad habit of starting and stopping.  My mom used to tell me that I was terrible with beginnings and endings, that I needed more middle.  She wasn't wrong.

Knowing this about myself, and also with the full awareness that this is an unnatural season, not something simply flowing from moment to moment, I am cautious.

Two months after my mom's death, I have only quit one thing and not taken on anything new. I've let my son wrap-up his time with gymnastics - he has found something else that sparks his heart, and I need to respect that.  Still, nearly two years of weekly lessons and the random assortment of Mommy & Me classes before that meant something, and the end of that signals a new season for my boy.

But I can feel it.  I can feel more change coming in my life. 

In the past (almost) five years of motherhood. I've tried to squeeze myself into some boxes that don't fit. My mom told me that I tend to jump in, feet first, considering the consequences only when I'm in over my head.  She wasn't wrong.

I am trying to hear her voice and take some slower steps.

With time, with caution, with reflection, I can keep breaking out of those boxes and finding something that fits better.

When I sit with myself, with God, things start to make a bit more sense.

This morning, settling into my classroom for the day, I realized, I'm not going to look for the next new thing, for this change that's coming. I'm going to wait for it. I'm going to let change show itself to me.

And I felt so relieved.

I don't have a timeline.

I don't have to go in search of change.

Change will find me.

And before I know it, I'll be back in the middle. And that's where I thrive.