Getting from here to there

“Transition” is not one of my favorite words. It implies hard work, change, letting go of the familiar and heading into the unknown. It takes a person from what was to what will be and often involves pain. Biological mothers everywhere know exactly what I’m talking about.

So do daddies watching daughters glide down the aisle in white dresses, and employees leaving the nest of comfort on the wings of promotion. Transition is everywhere.

As a writer working on a fiction manuscript, I face it in nearly every scene. How does Fernando get from his Ford and into his front room? How does Paula get from dinners for one to picnics in the park? Transition.

And how do last month’s holiday cookie-eaters get from their sweatpants back into their dress pants? They call my son Jake.

Jake is a personal trainer who helps people change. He teaches them how to get from pudgy to perfect, and even uses special exercises called—you guessed it—transitional exercises.

For example, if a client is working muscle set A, and wants to move to muscle set B, Jake takes him from an exercise for set A, into an exercise that uses both set A and B, and then into one that uses only set B. Sounds logical, but it’s hard work.

We can’t get away from transition, and we shouldn’t want to. The push from here to there keeps us moving forward. It squeezes life out of boney winter branches into green spring buds, and builds strength into the flabby muscles of winter revelers.

Transition challenges us, even as we trade in an old, marked-up calendar for a nice new clean one.

Some people worry that 2012 will be the last page in mankind’s datebook. If it is, fine. If not, great. My life doesn’t hang on a round Mayan rock with no room for the future; it hangs on the cross of Jesus Christ who said He’d never let me out of His hand.

Transition is not easy, but we have Someone who promised to get us through it. As we take those first steps into 2012, let’s look to the God who knows what’s coming, and trust Him to take care of us along the way.

Behold, I make all things new. —Rev. 21:5 (NKJ)

Veterans of a different battle

After two days of excruciating pain and two more of mind-numbing drugs, I learned several things.

1. It is not wise to ignore new, inexplicable pain – it’s trying to tell you something.
2. I can walk and work more slowly and the world will not fall off its axis.
3. Breakfast in bed is not all it’s cracked up to be.
4. And if that bed is “in the depths,” God is still there (Psalm 139:8b).

As I wrote in my last posting, many of us do more than we should, and need to cut back.
But more recently I learned that everything can be cut back, and life does not come to an end.

Sickness was not part of my plan last week, but as hour after hour stacked up more and more unfinished tasks and beautifully orchestrated expectations, I was forced to let go of each and every one, lie back in the arms of the Lord, and let Him carry me.

I found, again, that He is there. And I remembered that He is a veteran of pain.

As we look this week to our military veterans who have offered and often laid down their lives for our freedom, let us also consider the silent suffering by those of whom we may not be aware. They, too, are veterans – veterans of knowing that God is there, even when they don’t understand the why’s of their situations.

I have heard the dear mother of one such sufferer say with deep conviction, “O our God … We do not know what to do, but our eyes are upon You” (II Chronicles 20:12b).

Indeed, Lord. Our eyes are upon You