Transition

I’m not into sharing birth stories. This should not be surprising. But I want to hear yours if it was really wild, like in a car delivered by your brother in law. (I could hear that story a thousand times.)

I realize my aversion could be the C-Section girl in me reacting. We C-Section Survivors can’t help but slink away from the Birth Story Discussion Parties feeling a teensy inadequate, a bit less empowered.

Why is this? Simply because our glory stories occur somewhere between us begging for the anesthesiologist  to increase all dosages and  just let us pass out, and the moment when it’s over and they actually do increase all  dosages and let us pass out? Maybe.

And even though I do not leave the post op room in awe of what my body can do,( I ‘m in a half coma begging for chapstick) I still contest that making it through multiple major abdominal surgeries [mostly] AWAKE, has to be worth something.

I digress.

The first time I was in labor, somewhere in the haze and and pain and exhaustion, I remember my OB standing over me smiling diaboloically, asking, “Nina, do you know where you are? You are in transition. That’s why it hurts so bad. Welcome.”

Transition. Painful, unavoidable. Not the end, not the goal, but necessary to pass through to win the prize.

I have a number of dear friends in Transition right now. Not in birthing labor. But in the labor of life so to speak. Friends who have said a  Courageous Yes to big callings, new adventures, scary commitments. They believe in where they are going and they are willing to leave behind where they have been, but, ugh,  it’s all those hard details in between that can put you under…

According to my limited life experience, you are in Transition if any of the following apply:

1. You can’t answer to where you will be this time next month.

2. The most troubling line on any form is your address.

3. Your earthly possessions are scattered in laundry boxes, your car trunk, or your friends garages.

4. At any point in the next three months you will be living with your in-laws, or your spouse’s in-laws, or your friend’s in-laws, (and you are convinced the increased awkwardness of that last scenario is worth the maintaining of your firm boundaries.)

Transitioning is letting go before grasping on again, which sounds kind of pretty, except for all of that horrid, detailed work in between.  There’s a spiritual principal  here – I don’t know which one. But I’m going to look for a Desert Fathers quote that could apply. (My new goal is to quote the Desert Fathers in natural conversation.)

In the meantime, I’m grateful for what these friends are reminding me about faithfulness and sacrifice and the illusions of comfort. They are learning to take it day by day, pray desperate prayers, and they are seeing answers and Movement and the truth of real security.

And a Grace surrounds it all that just isn’t invited in by my Personal Transition Strategy of (you guessed it) wanting to scream for increased dosages and just pass out.