Life Giving Transitions...



I wish that I had creative words to write tonight.  I almost feel like I should, due to the sheer fact that it's been almost three months since I have blogged.  Surely, I should have something inspiring to write.  The truth is, I have felt so many different emotions the past 5 months since our move to Boston, and I've struggled to sort them all out.  I think that I didn't realize just how hard, painful, exciting, and crazy awesome a major transition could be.

Leaving everything familiar and known...definitely hard.
Discovering a world of opportunity and possibility...crazy exciting.
Trying to find your place and start everything over...painful.
Realizing you have been brought to a place for such a time as this...crazy awesome.

While on vacation, we decided to buy Biruk a hermit crab.  Don't ask why.  This actually turned out to be a decent timely purchase, because we wound up putting our dog down a couple weeks later, a dog that's been a part of our family for almost 12 years (that's a blog for another day).  There was just one problem.  The hermit crab didn't do anything.  He didn't crawl, didn't come out of his shell, didn't play on the water sponge.  In fact, he buried himself every day in the sand.  He quite possibly became the most boring hermit crab to date.

A couple weeks ago, Nate looked in the cage and there were claws and hermit crab leg parts everywhere.  It was disgusting.  He was like, "Ang, I think we killed the hermit crab."  That was surprising because his cage sat on the really hot porch (I guess we gave up on including him in our Sawtelle Family life.).  For some reason, Nate didn't bother to clean it up, and when he did a couple days later, he saw something moving in the shell.  The hermit crab...was alive...seriously.

Now I have no idea what all those legs were doing in there, but I am going to assume the crab molted his shell.  For some reason we had forgot that was part of their job.

Here's the deal...since then, that Spidey (which Biruk so lovingly named him), has seriously come to life!  He plays in the water, walks around the sand, has conversations with us (ok, maybe he's not that life filled, but he is at least not burying himself in the sand anymore).

This got me thinking.  Change is not only hard, but it's ugly sometimes.  Sometimes in the process, we feel like we lose a piece of us.  We look at our life and feel like everything we knew about ourselves, the things that we had come to love and be confident in, suddenly feel like they are scattered around us in pieces.

But then something exquisite happens.  God's grace and beauty shows up and just starts transforming things.  I saw it this summer.

I saw it as 15 teenagers gathered in our small living room for Bible Study.
I saw it as my son was embraced by a youth group who has now become his extended family.
I saw it as I served communion to student leaders on the campus of the college I graduated from.
I saw it as I watched a teen who was disconnected suddenly feel like she was surrounded by family.
I saw it as I watched my son jump into the deep end for the first time.
I saw it as I watched a group of 8 junior high girls in my camp cabin feel valuable for the first time.

And you know what...it's been incredibly life giving and beautiful.

Tomorrow, for the first time in 15 years, I won't walk into the gym to coach volleyball.  Instead, I will walk into the college classroom to teach a Youth Ministry Class.  It's a transition...and an opportunity to watch God's exquisite grace and beauty unfold.


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