Have you ever wondered how to embrace life’s changes with a heart full of gratitude? Join me on the journey where I share stories from my own life, including witnessing my daughters' educational milestones, and navigating unexpected leadership changes at our church. Each transition has led to reflection on our shared journeys offering valuable lessons on growth and blessings.
As the season of spring breathes new life into our surroundings, we’ll explore how these natural cycles mirror our personal experiences. By revisiting my childhood city, I’ve encountered a whirlpool of emotions that have made me ponder the beauty of coming full circle. Whether you're amidst your own changes or simply seeking a moment of connection, this episode encourages you to see transitions as opportunities for deeper contemplation and to embrace the future with hope and gratitude. Tune in to discover how we can face life's shifts together, inspired by the promise of new beginnings.
Have you ever wondered how to embrace life’s changes with a heart full of gratitude? Join me on the journey where I share stories from my own life, including witnessing my daughters' educational milestones, and navigating unexpected leadership changes at our church. Each transition has led to reflection on our shared journeys offering valuable lessons on growth and blessings.
As the season of spring breathes new life into our surroundings, we’ll explore how these natural cycles mirror our personal experiences. By revisiting my childhood city, I’ve encountered a whirlpool of emotions that have made me ponder the beauty of coming full circle. Whether you're amidst your own changes or simply seeking a moment of connection, this episode encourages you to see transitions as opportunities for deeper contemplation and to embrace the future with hope and gratitude. Tune in to discover how we can face life's shifts together, inspired by the promise of new beginnings.
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Speaker 1:
Welcome back to the Create Harmony podcast. So this podcast is a place where we savor life's blessings and we focus on setting an intentional rhythm so together we can learn how to use our imagination as a tool to listen to God. And if you're new here, let me tell you what you can expect. It's topics that raise your well-being, and if you're looking for a place to refresh your life, you can find it right here as well. If you like to be creative and fun, you are going to feel right at home In this place. We'll take a few minutes to celebrate everyday joys and to remind ourselves how to notice goodness all around us. So I'm your host, sally Burlington, and this is episode 76.
Speaker 1:
So here at Create Harmony, we like to coordinate our content with the seasons, so we try to look at what season we're in and the changes that we see in nature and make a connection there. So right now I live in North Carolina and we are in springtime. So for the past few weeks we've been talking about glimmers, which are little micro moments of joy and peace, and also last week we talked about spring cleaning and how to freshen up your household. So today we're going to talk about transition, since springtime is a time of new growth possibility and that topic just seemed to fit in right here. But I'm going to, before we really get deep into transition, I'm going to give you a little bit of an update, frame up what has been going on around our house, because this is kind of what triggered this topic. So I've told you before that we've moved houses last year and had lots of change in our with our stuff. But with that that part's all settled down. We are now settled in our house, we've unpacked everything and we don't have that change. But we do still have lots of transitions and changes going on, because our youngest daughter just graduated from high school and she's preparing for college this fall. And then I have an older daughter who is a college student already and she moves around as often as college students do. So this spring, just for example this spring, we moved all of her stuff from one apartment to a house in the city that she goes to college and then we got her back here at home and then transitioned her to a totally different city where she's going to do a summer internship. So during this season we're saying goodbye to high school teachers and the school itself and all the staff we love. At the same time, sort of the context of our lives. A lot of our friends also have graduates, so we're watching those kids grow up and get ready to launch and we're watching our friends experience some of the same things that we are going through.
Speaker 1:
It just feels like there's a lot of change going on around us and, ironically, we just happen to be experiencing an unexpected change in pastors at our church, and the reason that's important is that I happen to be on the leadership team this year and so there's been a lot of levels of leadership that were unexpected that I've needed to participate in, and we have an interim pastor right now and we'll get our new pastor this fall. So just feels like lots of things are changing and shifting in our immediate environment and I'm not sure. When I sat down to write this content and think through what I was going to say today, I thought I'm not sure if you feel this, but it feels like that in our post COVID times. Our world is in transition of some sort, and I sometimes can't quite put my finger on everything that's shifting, but it definitely feels like change is unfolding in our wider world. Now, if we all got in a room together. We might not all agree on whether these changes are good or bad, we might not even all agree on what these changes are, but we probably all feel that shift in some way. So running alongside all these transitions you guessed it there are a lot of feelings. These are big life changes and that's really gotten me thinking.
Speaker 1:
So what I feel about this is, when you move through a transition like this, the tendency is to take the long view. You tend to reflect back on everything that has already happened and, you know, consider where you're going forward. It's easier to lift your gaze from the grind of life and to see your life as a whole. So somewhere in the processing of all of this the prayerful consideration, the journaling, things that I do to process my life I have really been thinking about how we journey along. So as I'm processing all these changes, I'm just I've been really sort of thinking about journeying, the concept of journeying and as traveling through life, and in my meeting the other day with my spiritual director, we sort of got on the topic of when you pass through life and pass by this way again, what it's like, this way again, what it's like, I don't know, the image came to my mind of me walking along and then passing through an area that looks familiar but somewhat different when I pass back this way again, and that that sentiment has just been settling on my soul lately.
Speaker 1:
Maybe part of that, in addition to all these changes, maybe part of that is that my oldest daughter's internship is in the city where I grew up and lived much of my early life. We have not lived there for over 20 years. So going back there I'd been there, but not often. But going back there with her and seeing it through her eyes, much has changed since I lived there, but much is still the same, and when I was passing back that way again, I just had a lot of feelings. I had a lot of thoughts, and just it made me remember some things that had been sort of dormant in my mind until I saw them again.
Speaker 1:
Now most of my feelings are positive and they're undergirded with deep gratitude. I'm aware that these are wonderful blessings. I'm getting to see my children grow up and they're thriving. We had teachers that were saying goodbye to. That played amazing roles in my children's lives and we're so very grateful for that. We're lucky to have the resources to make all these choices. So a lot of what I'm experiencing is undergirded with gratitude, but there have been a few other feelings in the mix, a few other thoughts. I'm realizing when I look at my children, that I've learned a few things since I was sitting in the graduate seat.
Speaker 1:
Now that I'm passing back by that way again, I'm realizing that the list of things I know for certain is much shorter. I don't really deal in as many absolutes or rights and wrongs as I did when I was younger. When I was younger, I thought I had it all figured out. I had everything. I had a long list of things that were right and sure. But as I've grown and hopefully I've grown in wisdom I'm realizing that certainty is not what I feel on most topics. There's a lot more nuance to things than I realized as a younger person. However, there are some things that I am absolutely still certain and I'm very clear on those and that short list I feel like I've gotten even more certain about. These are things I know for sure and they're things like what I focus on, matters and it shapes everything about my experience, and things like gratitude. Gratitude is a powerful force for good. I am absolutely sure that God is loving and interested in the well-being of all people. However, my understanding of what that looks like or how that's going to play out has really deepened and expanded since I passed this way the first time, and one thing I've observed this is more of an observation than a certainty one thing I've observed is that the people who are aging the best are those who are are both adaptable and resilient. So I'm getting better at navigating all these big changes in life with those truths guiding me along.
Speaker 1:
Now, in our time of transition, I'm really focusing on our blessings, because I told you earlier that I'm trying to be focused on gratitude and I'm trying to journal and capture these moments each and every day. I'm trying to process them with the tool of gratitude sprinkled throughout. But I'm also beginning to envision what this next phase will look like for all of us. But I'm also beginning to envision what this next phase will look like for all of us. What new things will we learn? What new places will we go and people will we meet? The future has yet to happen, and that means we can still influence the outcome. We are not necessarily living as the cast in a dystopian movie, although sometimes I feel a little tempted to fear that, although sometimes I feel a little tempted to fear that we're making choices every day that drive our results, and within every problem I try to remember there's also a possibility. So I'm reminded to adapt my thinking in order to shape my results. So, hopefully, if you're passing through some transitions, maybe you can add in some gratitude practices. Or just consider what's it like when I pass this way again. What does it feel like? What did I feel like the first time I passed this way and what does it feel like to pass this way again?
Speaker 1:
So for our closing today, I'm going to read a poem by Clive Blake, who is a Cornish poet, and it's called Our Journey, since we've been talking about journeys today. So it goes like this we embark on a new journey. Let our travels never end. Keep us heading in the same direction, though the track may sometimes bend. Let happiness be our destination, not begrudge a single mile. Let us revel in new discoveries, greet each fresh dawn with pleasure. Let us find an inner wealth and know the true meaning of treasure. Us find an inner wealth and know the true meaning of treasure.
Speaker 1:
So thanks for joining us today as we consider all these transitions. Thanks for listening to my rambling about all the changes that are happening in my life. Hopefully, if you are experiencing any kind of transition, this has been inspiring to you as well, and maybe I'm going to be pondering more and more on the concept of life as lots of circles and how we pass by the same way more than once. So you'll probably hear some more about that in the next few weeks, but, and also more about springtime. I'm going to give a garden update pretty soon, so you need to tune in for that, and until next time, peace.