Emotional and Spiritual Transitions

So... I've been doing this blog for about a month now and it seems that all I'm talking about is transition. Well, it IS a big subject for me. I've done a lot of it and mostly unwillingly I confess. I am not by nature one who likes change and yet it seems to have been the driving factor of my life as time after time I found myself starting over or heading off in a different direction or having to relate somehow to someone who was changing. This is not comfortable at all for one who likes (dare I say needs?) to be able to see the end from the beginning.

Hey - I do not hesitate to read the back of a book if I feel the need to do so. I have done that as long as I remember. I can watch movies and read books more than once. It doesn't ruin it for me at all.

But what does all this transition have to do with an Open Door. Well, if your door used to be shut or even only partially open then for it to be fully open is a huge difference. Getting to the place of opening wide my door has been a long transition. This is about the spiritual and emotional effects of physical transition.

Here's a little history....

I am historically a loner from a family of loners. People who read books at the table rather than conversing with each other. Getting married didn't change this about me and a source of some conflict was that my husband was pretty social and I pretty wasn't. When I became a Christian at 19 and started going to church this began the first steps toward change. I noted it and even others who knew me commented on it. But I didn't realize then that when you are in church the relationships are pretty much founded on your common interest in the church itself. Deep inside I was still a loner. Life's circumstances took me in and out of being relational with people. But the big transition began in the mid 80' when Larry and I found ourselves - at God's direction - leaving the church system that had been our Christian home for a number of years. No longer did we have that structure to rely on. By the mid 90's we even found ourselves completely detached from - not just the church - but from the body of Christ. We had not backslidden - our faith had not failed - but as Father orchestrated the transformation of us from what we were to what he wanted us to be we found ourselves almost utterly alone for about five years. It was a pretty bad time for us. After certain changes took place within us Father began reconnecting us. It was a slow process but one day I realized that God had connected us to a bunch of people who liked to come together on the common ground of worship and for a few years we gathered together semi regularly, in various ways and learned to love each other. But even then I realized that the commonality was the atmosphere that the Holy Spirit would create for us and I wondered what we would do without that.

That question hung out in my mind for several years while I desperately, on the inside, was afraid of losing these people. AHHHH... The loner didn't want to be alone anymore. She had truly learned to appreciate community - even if it was lived at arms length. AND she was OK with arms length. That was comfortable. That didn't take a lot of skill and you could still hide out inside yourself when you wanted to.

But then came the Kansas City experience. Now this was a transition I tried to be open to at the beginning but as it unfolded I became completely rebellious to it. I truly fought this once I found myself in it.

We fell into the company of people in KC who had been in community with each other at a level that Larry and I weren't used to. We heard the vision and listened to the various expressions from the various people involved in this and found that God was going "BAM - let's kick this up a notch". These folks were always talking about getting into the middle of each other's "stuff". But even from the moment of beginning to understand this it has been a journey in itself. And there are journeys within journeys as God has healed some places in my heart that made me want to keep people out and made me afraid.

But I have found that I want very much for my door to be open to those I love and to those who are a part of the body of Christ and to those who don't even know him. I know that not all people become your close walking buddies. Some people that you meet you will never have a real earthly relationship with. There is an ebb and flow to relationships that we must respect as each person walks the path that Father has them on. Larry and I learned to hold loosely to people but to keep the door of our life open to them. There are some though that Father brings to your life and He wants you to walk closely with these. There's a lot to be understood about community at this level and how each one involved lives it.

But I have come to that place where I want to continue the journey of becoming so healed that there is room in my heart for the people Father gives me. Room for surprises and yes, if necessary, change. So based on a picture God gave to a friend of mine just before I came to Dallas I called my blog Open Door. She saw me as a bird in a cage, but the door had been opened and I was flying out of the cage.

With deliberate intentionality I am embracing this process so that I can change, transition and transform.