As soon as you hear the word transition or change, I’m sure a range of images, experiences, life stages, and emotions occur. As they signal the end of one thing and the beginning of something else, transitions also include a threshold: the “space between” that incorporates the ending of the former, the journey, and the beginning of the new. Transitions and thresholds don’t always happen linearly, they are often nuanced, and they’re deeply personal.
Transitions: The inner reorientation and self-redefinition that you have to go through in order to incorporate … changes into your life. Without a transition, a change is just a rearrangement of the furniture. Unless transition happens, the change won’t work, because it doesn’t “take.” (William Bridges, Making Sense of Life’s Changes)
Thresholds: “A threshold is … a frontier that divides two different territories, rhythms, and atmospheres, [where] a great complexity of emotion comes alive: confusion, fear, excitement, sadness, hope. Listen inward with complete attention until you hear the inner voice calling you forward. The time has come to cross.”
John O’Donohue To Bless the Space Between Us
Transitions can be planned and known, anticipated, unplanned, unwelcome, or sudden. They can include a move, a loss, a shift in life stages, a new relationship, a new birth, or a change in personal health. When you find yourself facing a threshold, may you embrace the threshold not rushing, but experiencing what God has for you: meaning, joy, strangeness, mourning, and beauty in this fragile and vulnerable space.
