Can Change Be Both Something You Love and Hate?

For everyone in my family, transitions from one thing to the next are hard. With school starting this week and me beginning full-time work at the museum, we’ve been in the midst of much change, which is equally exciting and difficult.

Case in point: the exhibit team I’m on is working on installing the flooring and foundation for an exhibit I’ve been designing that is going to look like an aspen grove. Ben needed my help placing all the support pieces of the floor grid so he could start anchoring them in place.

I took one look at the structural drawing and almost cried. Who can read these things? Give me concepts to illustrate or a story to visually express, and I’m off to the races. But this? This was a whole different thing. It was new. It was unknown.

I was excited to help see my exhibit come to life. But I was also terrified that I didn’t have the ability to learn how to do something like this.

And that, I think, is my experience with change in a nutshell: a tension between dread/dislike and excitement/anticipation. I love starting new things, but also deeply fear new things. It’s such a weird mixture of emotions. My creativity gets activated immediately and my propensity to come up with a million ideas just goes and goes, but there’s always this grieving over having to shift my work or schedule or rhythms to accommodate the new thing—and the fear that I don’t have what it takes to DO the new thing.

Whether it’s a new job, a new commission or painting, or even a new appliance (I really want a new microwave, but do I?), I hold these opposing desires.

What does one do with this type of tension? Is there a way to resolve it? SHOULD it be resolved?

I’ve been wrestling with this for a while, because the tension is exhausting at times and, quite frankly…annoying!

Even worse when you’re dealing with someone else’s mixed feelings about transition. Oye.

And honestly, I haven’t gotten very far, but here’s what I’ve found helpful.

Acknowledge the tension.

Rather than pretending that it doesn’t exist, be honest about the existence of the tension you are feeling as you move into a transition. Maybe that’s just journaling or praying about it. Maybe it’s talking with a trusted friend. The Psalms are a great model for honest acknowledgement of emotions and desires.

Psalm 6:6-7

I am weary with my moaning; every night I flood my bed with tears; I drench my couch with my weeping. My eye wastes away because of grief; it grows weak because of all my foes.

Remember what is true.

In times of change, our imaginations can get really out of control by over-idealizing a new situation or catastrophizing it. I tend to do both. So along with acknowledging the emotions and feelings that go along with change, it’s important to recall what you know to be true.

• God is for me, not against me. He desires my good.

• I am a dynamic, always-growing human being.

• I don’t know how this will turn out, but God does.

• I am never alone in these seasons. God goes with me.

Maybe part of remembering what is true is remembering that not knowing how to do something is not the same as being incapable of learning it.

Again, if we look at the Psalms, this is a consistent shift that the author makes after being honest.

Psalm 10:14

But you do see, for you note mischief and vexation, that you may take it into your hands; to you the helpless commits himself; you have been the helper of the fatherless.

Reframe the tension.

Rather than thinking of this tension as a problem, what if it’s a gift? What if these mixed emotions—the simultaneous presence of anxiety and excitement—are simply part of what it means to grow and adapt?

Just as pain can be a signal that we are in need of care, discomfort can sometimes be a signal that we are growing and adapting. When we embrace this rather than hide from it or numb it away, we can find joy in the discomfort and rich growth. We just have to be willing participants.

I don’t think I’ll ever be a big fan of change, but I can choose to enter into it with hope and peace.

Maybe the goal isn’t to resolve the tension between excitement and grief, fear and anticipation. Maybe the goal is simply to be willing to hold both—and trust God in the middle of them.