Seasons

When I began my job in Financial Aid fifteen years ago {eeek! how!?!?!}, I was hired to be a loan counselor. In those days, each counselor in the office was assigned to a specific task, and she did that task for every student. As you know, math is not my strong suit, and while the job intimidated me, I felt that I could learn the loan process and do that one thing over and over every day.

So a few months later, when my dear friend and head of our office, Lois, sat across from me and explained the new office layout...the one in which each counselor had responsibility over every task for a certain group of students. I stared at her...unable to comprehend what she just said. Me? Learn everything? Learn every part of a math job?

I'm convinced the Lord sent Lois to our office for many reasons, one of which was helping me learn the beginnings of the art of change. To say I resisted change is an understatement. I loathed it, abhorred it, and ran as far from it as I possibly could, in every area of my life. I didn't want change anywhere. Not in my relationships, not in my job, not in any part of life. I gripped tightly to whatever I had, hoping if I could hang onto it, it meant that somehow I was doing something right. That I'd succeeded in some way.

My sister once told me that when you lose the things most dear to you, you learn to let go. She had to let go of her baby...and years later, her home. And she said that in each of those things, she learned control was never hers. Any control she thought she had was never hers.

And in the last five years, my goodness...have I ever learned it for myself. The girl who hated any change has suddenly undergone every change. The hardest, deepest losses. The biggest, most beautiful gifts. The most unexpected. The most mind-blowing.

Today I begin a new season. A season of training and of letting go of a beautiful gift. Of entrusting that gift into the hands of another. Of running the final leg of the race with every ounce of stamina I can muster, so I can end the journey saying I have fought the good fight and given it my very best.

I confess to you that I had a horrible dream about it this weekend. A horrible dream that everything went wrong and the entire passing of the baton became something of a heartbreak Olympic story. So I've been praying extra hard that that dream does not come true.

I pray for an open hand to let go of this dear gift. I pray for mental clarity for both of us as I pour out the knowledge I've accumulated and she opens her mind to receive it. I pray for God to teach us both more about ourselves in this brief time we have together. I pray for her confidence to learn an extraordinary amount of information in an extraordinarily brief time. I pray for my wisdom in compassionately teaching skills that come second nature to me now. I pray for beauty for both of us as we walk toward our respective new futures.

Thanks, Lois, for walking the early, treacherous days of change with me. Thanks for teaching me that it's okay to learn something new. Thanks, Lori, for modeling what it's like to let go in the hardest moments and to open your hands to receive the new that God has.