Transition

Transition is inevitable. True, it can be painful at times, but in my experience it is only through pain that I learn the really important lessons.

I took a stress test a few years ago, not the kind on the treadmill at the doctor’s office but the kind where I checked the boxes in a list of all the major life changes, both good and bad, that I had been experiencing at the time. You see, even the good changes cause stress. According to that test I should have been dead. I had gone through a sea change in almost every arena of my life starting with some very bad things, which eventually led to some very good things. During that season of my life I learned first-hand that how those bad things are going to affect and change me – for better or for worse – is largely up to me.

I can’t often control the things that happen to me. I can’t control what people say to me or about me, I can’t control the events that come up against me, I can’t control many of the things that get handed to me, but I can always control one thing in my life. I can control my responses. And therein lies the difference between life and death.