change.

We have faced a tremendous amount of change in the past 6 months. Of course the most obvious one being a global pandemic, but many have experienced other kinds of change. Maybe you've changed as a person, maybe your home life has changed, maybe you are adjusting to college. We typically view change as bad thing. We like to know exactly how everything is going to play out. However, life can change on a whim. God may throw something at us we weren't expecting at all. And that is okay. There are things we cannot change: things that are out of our hands. By leaving behind the things we cannot change, we make room for new beginnings and move forward with hope and grace. 

1. Think things through and ask, ‘What’s the worst that can happen?’

2. Ask yourself how much you can control

3. Accept and reframe

4. Celebrate the positives

5. Take in the negatives and feel those emotions without dwelling on them/ Practice self care after a loss

6. Take action

7. Manage your stress

8. Seek support

Some poems about change:

we're only haunted by things we refuse to accept

-bridgett devoue

~

The tide rises, the tide falls, The twilight darkens, the curlew calls; Along the sea-sands damp and brown The traveller hastens toward the town,       And the tide rises, the tide falls. Darkness settles on roofs and walls, But the sea, the sea in the darkness calls; The little waves, with their soft, white hands, Efface the footprints in the sands,       And the tide rises, the tide falls. The morning breaks; the steeds in their stalls Stamp and neigh, as the hostler calls; The day returns, but nevermore Returns the traveller to the shore,       And the tide rises, the tide falls.

-henry wadsworth longfellow

~

Change is the new,

improved

word for god,

lovely enough

to raise a song

or implicate

a sea of wrongs,

mighty enough,

like other gods,

to shelter,

bring together,

and estrange us.

Please, god,

we seem to say,

change us. -wendy videlock

Embrace change as much as you can. It's not easy, but you have the rest of your life to work on it.

xo, emma