Every calendar year spans twelve months: it starts fresh in January, runs its course through four seasons (more or less, depending on one’s vantage point on the globe), culminates with the Christmas season, reaches a ripe old age and comes to a close, birthing a new year in its wake. This is a cycle that we experience regularly, every 365 days: it is relatively predictable, reliable, and we like that, because it doesn’t require a whole lot of conscious thought. We’ve done it before and, good health and Lord willing, we’ll do it again.

So many other aspects of life happen in cycles, too: from the microcosmic 24-hour day: waking – productivity – rest & recovery, to the mesocosmic human lifespan: birth – creativity – death, not to mention the macrocosmic generations, civilisations and eras experiencing their own stages of birth, fruitful processes and death.

Having familiar daily and annual cycles lends rhythm & routine to our lives, which we find comforting and manageable. This gives us space – ‘mental bandwidth’ – to deal with the less-predictable events that inevitably arise along the way. People are all different, and everyone deals with change in his or her own way, but it’s safe to say that change often incites some measure of instability, to a lesser or greater degree. When the change is positive it can initiate surges of dopamine and oxytocin, while negative changes entail more fight-or-flight adrenaline and cortisol. An important variable, though, is predictability: positive events that we plan or foresee give us time to build up eager anticipation, while negative changes are more palatable, less stressful, when we see them coming. We’re control-oriented creatures: although infants generally go nicely with the flow, they quickly develop into slightly older toddlers who tend to fare better when they understand what’s going on and can wrap their brains around what to expect. “In five minutes it will be time to start getting ready for bed” goes down a whole lot better than a sudden “Ok, time’s up! Put the toys away now, it’s time for bed.” It seems that the more we mature, the more control we want to exert over our lives.

tran·si·tion
/tranˈziSH(ə)n/

noun: transition
1. the process or a period of changing from one state or condition to another.
verb: transition
1. undergo or cause to undergo a process or period of transition.

Origin
1. late Middle English (in the sense ‘grammatical transitivity’): from Latin transitio(n-), from transire ‘go across’.

The process of changing, going across one state to another. Metamorphosis, but for humans? Pretty much.

I recently underwent a massive transition: my family and I moved – not just from one street to another, one town, one state or even one country to another, but from one continent, one hemisphere to another, from Australia to Canada; approximately 13,573.08 kilometers or 8,433.92 miles, as the crow flies. That’s a BIG transition! That’s so big that our furniture took nearly three months to catch up with us.

Why did we do this? For something better. It wasn’t that we didn’t love our previous situation: we certainly did, and we miss it sorely, sometimes. For my husband, it was for a change, a new challenge; for me, it was for family. We’ve transitioned our lives from Hurstville to Toronto. We can’t turn back now, for better and for worse. 

This article was written by Jenn based on her presentation at the Australian New Church Women’s Weekend in Nov 2024

I like to listen to a Christian radio station in Sydney, Australia, that plays great Christian songs as well as run-of-the-mill songs that have good messages. I am often inspired by songs that they air, one of which is ‘This Is Your Life’ by Switchfoot (you can listen to it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sx9RcI_EueM).

This song has a message that really grabs me: “This is your life: are you who you want to be?” It’s basically saying, “Look at yourself, look at your life: you’ve only got one pass at it, there are no re-dos; are you happy with it? Is your life what you want it to be? Are you who you want to be?” Time is ticking, none of us is getting any younger; are we actually happy with who we are? Are we living meaningful lives, are we proud of what we do and think? Or are we just ‘fluffing along’, not feeling any purpose in what we do? To be fair, life is a roller coaster: we all have peaks and valleys, times of bounty and times of harvest; if we do feel like we’re just fluffing along, it may be ok, we don’t necessarily have to beat ourselves up over it, the next good thing might be right around the corner. Goodness knows, sometimes we need to have mercy on ourselves, to recognise that we’re in a valley, life is tough at the moment, we’re doing the best we can. We need to pick our battles – as with toddlers, as with our own lives.

….But if we’ve made a habit of just fluffing along, we might find that it’s time to make some changes happen.

I think, too, that we probably reach a certain point in our lives when we find that we can lead meaningful lives even if we aren’t having the best of luck, even during a dry spell. How do we get to that point? The Heavenly Doctrines are a treasure trove of answers for this kind of life thing. For a long, long time, I fluffed along (more or less) on the coat-tails of my historical faith, living according to what I learned and was passed down to me by my parents and taught to me in school. I can’t tell you what changed, but somewhere along the way I started reading the Writings for myself – I’d read parts of them in various religion classes at Bryn Athyn College, in early adulthood, so I was no stranger to their existence, but it had all sat pretty superficially in my mind. Whatever it was that changed my trajectory, changed it for the better. I wasn’t living an overtly sinful life, but I was more grumbly in my head, more self-righteous, more self-interested; I still have that in me, I’m not gonna lie, and those beasts bob beneath the surface, sometimes closer, sometimes deeper, but, on the whole, they’re deeper than shallower.

(Trigger warning: mention of child death, but not actual! Just as a basis for comparison)

My husband and I are blessed with one biological child: a nearly-eighteen-year-old, tall, handsome, responsible, kind, gentle young man. I may be a bit biased, but he really does seem to be a good guy. I love that boy with all my Zach-loving heart! That has 100% not changed, nor will it likely ever.

….And yet, thinking back on his infancy & childhood, returning my mind to snuggling with him, breastfeeding him, carrying him around, laughing and playing with that little boy…. That’s all definitely gone, never to be retrieved. It’s just as well that our young adult progeny doesn’t require breastfeeding or carrying, goodness knows! We’re proud of his achievements in the various aspects of his life, not the least of which is his ability to nourish himself and get himself around, not only within the house but now from one suburb or city – or state – to the next; and we wouldn’t change a thing about him, really…… 

It’s just that it hurts. I blessedly haven’t experienced a child of mine dying – praise be to God! I hope I never will, and my heart aches for those who have; but it occurs to me that this transformation from little child to grown (nearly) adult is akin to that. The baby that we knew, the toddler, the rambunctious preschooler, the inquisitive, parent-adoring, question-asking schoolboy, he’s definitely gone. We weathered the holier-than-thou phase of adolescence and, I’m happy to say, appear to be on the other side of that: Zach really is such a sweet young man, and I very much love sharing hugs and kisses and laughs and insights with his nearly-adult self. I wouldn’t trade him for the world! ..I just mourn the loss of my sweet little boy, sometimes.