Change

Everyone experiences changes, but how do you deal with them? I don’t handle change very well, though I have the will to muddle through.
I moved every year until I was in the 8th grade. I lived in Denver for nineteen years until my husband received a job offer he couldn’t refuse, Well he could have, but the opportunities outweighed the uprooting of our family.

I though “piece of cake”. I know how to do this; I mean, I’ve plenty of experience, right? Van left a month before us to start his job while I took care of packing and arranging for the moving company to load us up. Here I have to give a shout out to my mom. I couldn’t have accomplished all that with three little ones. Anyway, California here we come.

It wasn’t a piece of cake or even a crumb. I sat in the little rental house and realized I had the well-being of my little boys to consider. Besides that, my husband had come down with valley fever. He went to work, came home, ate and went to bed. I couldn’t stress him out. I was a basket case, but I had to keep it together. I knew absolutely no one in town. How was I to find a good doctor for the boys, a dentist, or a church family? My oldest needed to finish kindergarten, but to which school?

My moving experience when I was young had been running outside to meet new friends while  mom took care of the details. I never knew what the details were or how she created a home for us.

I learned to cope, but not without many phone calls to my mom. She listened to me weep and encouraged me to keep moving forward. My boys are all well-adjusted, happy individuals so even with my bungling attempts, we did survive the change.

Another change was transitioning from a stay at home mom to a working mom. God blessed me with a perfect job in my children’s school district. After eighteen years, the district offered me the librarian position at the junior high. I had gone to book heaven and I loved those squirrelly kids.

When the horrible money crunch happened in 2008, I lost my librarian job. They kept me on as an aide, but I handled this changed very poorly. I was heartbroken as I witnessed a senior librarian demolish all my hard work. My body broke down and I contracted a virus of the inner ear causing vertigo. It was as if God had to put me in the corner for a time out. I took a deep look at my attitude and was humbled. I still had a job while many had lost theirs.

Three years later a librarian position opened up at an elementary school and I jumped on it. This was a huge change from junior high. I remember my first day with kids on campus. I was nervous as they had updated the system we use to manage the library and I had had only four hours training. I was sitting at my desk going over my notes for the umpteenth time, when I heard a blood-curdling scream. I leaped up thinking someone was hurting a child. I ran to the door, looked out and realized nobody was hurting anybody. It was a young child, a baby really, missing mom. I definitely wasn’t in the junior high or even Kansas anymore.

So here I am, hoping that when the next change comes, I will remember my lessons:

Life is full of changes, take a deep breath and move on.
Seek the good parts and ignore the rest, they aren’t worth the mental output.
Finally yet the most important one, pray through it, God does hear our cries.