Many times hard things come unexpectedly. Such was the case with me a week and a half ago when our local church congregation made some huge changes because of how big it had grown, and our family ended up being assigned to attend a different congregation at a different building with people we don't know as well as the ones we had been going to church with for the past 25 years.
I have worked on becoming more spontaneous and accepting change for years. Change has never felt comfortable to me, and yet life is always changing. I thought I had made great strides to becoming more adaptable. Actually, I HAVE made great strides. So when news of this major change in congregations came a week ago on Sunday I hoped I would adapt quickly. I gave myself some time to be sad about it (I cried for two days), then I picked myself up and decided to make the best of it. I put on a brave face, went through the week and right into our new church congregation on Sunday. I held up pretty well until it was almost time to go home. By the time I got home I was melting into tears.....again.
I tried to logic myself out of it. After all, it's not as if I have been asked to move to another state, or even to another city. I still have my same house, my same surroundings, everything that I love. No one else has moved either. No one has died. I have simply been asked to attend a different congregation. There are many bible stories where God required much more of his people than I am being asked to do. By those standards I have been asked to do practically nothing, and yet here I sit hardly able to talk about this change in my life without a quiver in my voice.
Sometimes I don't understand myself. I want to shake myself and say, "This is stupid!" Luckily for me, God is more patient with me than I am. In praying and asking for his guidance, I felt impressed with two thoughts:
First, that it would help to consciously think about every good thing and thank God for it specifically. I talk about and teach about gratitude frequently. Now I am to learn it on a new level. I felt impressed that I needed to recognize and be grateful for each and every person that said "hi" to me at my new church, every introduction, every smile, every interaction. I need to be grateful for the stained glass windows and the rock wall behind the podium and the upholstered pews. I need to find the good about everything I can think of about my new situation.
Second, I felt prompted to do a "write and burn" every day this week. I have talked about this in detail in my blogs earlier this year on "Letting Go of the Past". It is a fabulous tool! This is where you write your negative emotions down on paper, getting it all out. You can write about frustration, anger, disappointment, embarrassment, sadness, or any other emotion that is popping up. Once you have written all you can think of about that emotion, you take your paper outside, read it out loud to get the emotions verbally outside your body, then crumple up the paper and burn it. The act of burning it both destroys and purifies. It allows you to let go. I imagine this as I watch my paper burn. This exercise helps me to purge my negative emotions.
And so I forgive myself for not being as strong as I thought I was, for not being as adaptable and flexible as I thought I was. I forgive myself for being weak and easily broken. I ask God to forgive me too. Then I ask him to strengthen me so I can get up and move forward - not to another state or city or house, but just to another congregation. Where the rubber meets the road I realize I still have a long way to go.
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