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Kindle Notes & Highlights
Time frame: How long will fund-raising, processing visas, or packing take? Finances: How much will the move cost, and what are you willing to spend? (e.g., will you move yourself or hire movers?) Roles: Who will do what? (otherwise known as “I thought you were doing that!”) Storage: Will storing possessions be involved? How much needs to be gotten rid of before the transition? Housing: Will you need to stay with others as your departure date nears? Activities: What activities do you want to be sure to do or places you want visit one last time? Counsel: Whom do you need to talk to about these
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Take a moment and list an expectation you have in regards to each area. For example, “In regards to time, I expect …” This list will become your benchmark starting point.
Hidden expectations are common and can be addressed. One way to know if hidden expectations are occurring between you and someone else is to look for SWAT signs.11 Scorekeeping: when one or both of you are keeping track of who does what. Wheel Spinning: when you talk about the same problem over and over again. When an argument starts with you thinking, “Here we go again.” Avoidance: when one or both of you are avoiding certain topics or levels of intimacy. Trivial Triggers: when trivial issues are blown up out of all proportion. A small event triggers horrendous arguments.
This transition before you is significant in and of itself, and parts of you, your family, and your story will forever be altered because of it. And yet, it is about more than this one event, as it joins a larger story. This transition will not become the sum of your life. However, that doesn’t preclude it from being a significant marker that will help you orient yourself after you’ve gone through it.
Part of staying fertile, then, involves reminding yourself of the bigger picture—the bigger story—that came before and will live on after it.
How does one go about the lofty yet necessary goal of staying grounded in Christ? What does that even mean? Simply put, the connection you have with God must be maintained, even nurtured, and not simply put on autopilot or shelved.
Part of guarding your relationship with God is knowing yourself and what may or may not work for you; it also involves getting creative and throwing some shoulds out the window:
write down a few of our shoulds and then to cross out the word should and write could instead. So, what could you do to stay connected to God?
In times of transition when much is out of your control, it is tempting either to keep doing what you’ve always done even if it doesn’t seem to benefit you in the same way or to throw it out in frustration because it is no longer working. Right now, as you make decisions about how you want to approach this season of life, be open to going down other pathways.
And this is another piece of keeping your soul fertile: find ways to laugh at yourself or at the situations you will find yourself in.
A fertile soul facing a transition is one that is able to hold both the pain of the losses and the humorous as well as embrace difficult moments that will come.
My experience on the shuttle bus didn’t begin to revive me until I began to share it with others. Until it was given form in the retelling, it was mostly embarrassing and awkward, and I would have preferred to pretend it didn’t happen. The retelling allowed me to see the shuttle ride from the outside. I watched the faces of those listening to me, and I was able to join with them in responding with distress and a good laugh. It was in the sharing that it moved from awkwardness and shame to awkwardness and funny. The burden was lifted just a bit as levity infused the experience.
Part of the finishing well is accepting that it is simply going to be messy both physically and emotionally.
Most of us would say out loud that we don’t expect everything to go perfectly, but then act blindsided when they don’t.
The messiness of finishing well can come in expected and unexpected places: relationships, housing and possessions, finances, and weather.
Don’t confuse accepting with liking. You can accept without liking it. Emotions are part of the way we have been made in the image of God. To have them is a good thing. To have them as fallen beings in a fallen world can be a messy thing.
We looked earlier at the importance of staying grounded in Christ because doing so anchors you within the larger story, helping you avoid the temptation to turn this current chapter into the sum total of the story.
Just as God knew King David, there are aspects you and God know about yourself, but there are parts that God can show you about yourself as you go through this transition if you, like David, invite him into the process.
There are four key aspects to knowing yourself that will help you finish well so that you hear from God, “Well done, good and faithful servant!” The four aspects are time management, thoroughness of task completion, grieving style, and identity.
four categories: (1) paperwork, (2) personal belongings, (3) people, and (4) places and experiences.
Simply, finishing well for relationships involves three parts: marking, blessing, and release.
The grief involving a season of life ending is different from the unexpected loss of a family member or friend, which knocks you over. The type we’re dealing with here is less sudden; knowing that the loss is coming allows you the luxury of “working out your grief” even before the loss occurs. Turning and facing your grief about a season’s ending involves more than standing and letting grief wash over you in waves. There are things you can do to manage your grief in order to finish a transition well.
Of course, not everyone is going to be a safe person who gets your grief. But part of the conundrum is not all situations involving grief look like something to be grieved.
Tune in. Name it. Grieve it.
Don’t buy the lie that sorrow can be avoided by going around, over, or under it. It can’t. Sorrow that is avoided will hunt you down and show up as shut-down emotions, distance in relationships, confusing reactions to events, some form of physical manifestations, even in your interactions with God.
On your quest to finish well, you will encounter people, places, and possessions you will grieve, and you will have a choice: are you going to try to go around your grief or through it? Either way, life will go on, but by tuning in to what’s going on in you, naming it, and then grieving it, you allow this stage of your life to be mixed and churned together in such a way that it becomes fertilizer for your soul.
Part of finishing well is to count the cost and to acknowledge there is and will be a cost.
Your pause may be a chance to count the cost; it may also be God speaking to you.
If the pause comes, don’t beat yourself up. Know that it’s part of the process.
Choose right now to make peace with the reality that you will not pack or prepare perfectly so that when those moments happen, you can chalk them up to your margin of error. This will help you to move on and not get stuck in regret or frustration.
