I don’t believe it is by accident that transition marks this Lenten season for me. Transition brings the last of times, is its own spring cleaning, even with its unpredictability. Transition reveals the dependencies that weight life rather than grow it. Transition is a call to get ready for something new. How appropriate for Lent, a time to prepare for renewal and resurrection.
I wrote about praying through transition in my book The Praying Parent. Since I need to review these focus principles for myself, I’m sharing them with you as well.
Transition prepare us for change.
We stand in between the familiar and not-known which is a vulnerable place to be because most of us try to hold on to the familiar to our undoing. I don’t want to do that so I pray to the One Who Knows All to help me sift through what I need for the journey ahead and what I must let go.
Transition gives time to evaluate.
It is a time to evaluate what you brought me to this time in my writing, ministry, parenting, and marriage. Where are my strengths? Where are my weaknesses? This nothing-new-is-happening time gives space to see what God wants me to see, to follow His point in my thinking. It is a look back only to look forward and to protect against stalling in either direction.
Transitions give time to confess and address.
My growth is always stunted until I confess attitudes or actions that God says won’t help me. Without confessing these as growth-impeding realities, I risk repeating them and thereby deny the possibilities this transition wants to accomplish.
Transition puts you on a floating dock and ask you to step into a rocking boat. There you
stand with one foot on the dock and one foot on the boat. The longer you stay in between by choice, the more precarious the in between becomes. The key is to find the right rhythm that brings you to the right moment to get into the boat.