This Side of the Creek

There are many stages we as living creatures go through in life. The obvious include infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood and late adulthood. But what about all of the stages and transitions that take place from day to day, month to month, and year to year?

Upon meeting my boyfriend, I had to explain my hectic schedule and how my life seemed to be changing drastically. I said, “It’s like I’m coming out of the old and into the new.” It was something hard to describe and something I worried would scare him off.

He’s still here and I’m still transitioning.

In the past year my life has changed tremendously. I not only started graduate school, but met my significant other and really got a handle on some personal issues. Now what I am seeing is some of the hard work paying off. I am seeing that my past brought me to this very moment and that it wasn’t all pointless as I thought many times. I questioned if this was some form of late transition from adolescence into adulthood that most people my age had gone through already. Regardless, it feels good to know that I am moving out of the old and into the new.

Transitions at any age, however, can be challenging. I myself kept thinking, “Ah, I’m going crazy. I don’t understand why these things are happening or why I am choosing this path right now. When will it all make sense?” The bottom line is that life, in its entirety, will never make complete sense — it’s too confusing and too demanding. But after hearing something Pastor Dave said recently, it made much more sense. He said that sometimes we can hear/read/see the same things over and over without them making sense and then all of a sudden a light goes on and we are enlightened. Ah, my new favorite word — enlightened.

So it would seem that I myself have been enlightened recently. About a month ago, much of what I have seen, heard, read and known suddenly began to find a place in my life. At first I wanted to say, “Duh Meredith. You have known this all along,” but I can’t say that because I was going through a stage, a phase, a transition and those things simply hadn’t fit together as nicely in my life.

What are some transitions you have gone through in your life? What helped you through them and did you experience enlightenment along the way?