Something just changed. You might have missed it. But it happened. 

Some of us love change; some of us choose change. But not everyone, and not always. Sometimes change is forced on us by someone else. I was 13 when the sports news anchor on our old TV showed up wearing a dress. My dad got up and shut the TV off. He was certainly NOT going to watch a woman present sports news. It was not normal. For a long time, there was no sports news playing on our TV. But I have more recent memories of my dad watching women give sports news and even calling play by play in football. Between then and now, there was some kind of transition that enabled my dad to adjust to the new.

We can see change. We can measure it. What we don’t recognize as easily is the process of moving from one thing to another — the transition. Every change goes through this process, no matter how small. Maybe larger changes don’t surprise us when we hit transition issues. After all, if you move to a new city you expect to feel out of place for a while, to have trouble navigating roads as well as relationships. You grieve absent friends. Your heart aches and you can feel painfully vulnerable. But do we anticipate the transition experience of small or tiny changes?

Have you ever wondered why your family bickers in the car on Sundays as you go home from church? Why, after a lovely restful vacation you feel anything but rested once you get home? Why the week before your spouse leaves for a working trip you are grumpy and testy about petty things when you really just want to say, “I love you. I miss you already.” Many factors can be at play, but the main one is transition. Change is happening constantly. Every door we walk through, every person we meet brings some possibility of change. And every change brings a shift, a transition. It is the transition that creates the rub. Even driving from one community experience (church) to another (home) has a transition point.

Imagine yourself standing on the curb of Broadway Avenue in New York City. The traffic is heavy and drivers seem to follow no rules. You stand on the west side, but you need to be on the east side to get to transit. Both the west and the east side are beautiful and useful, although they are different. You cannot be on both sides at once; you must cross the street. The street is your transition. You step out, feeling imperiled and uncertain. Horns honk at you, cars screech to a stop. You forget why you even wanted to cross the street. You’re sure you will not survive. You even think of abandoning the whole effort, but you’re stuck in the middle. Nothing to do but persevere. In the end you get to the other side, heart pounding, a little the worse for wear. The transition behind you, you are on your way. 

Whether the transition is wide as a six-lane avenue, or as short as stepping through a doorway, we are affected by it. Often disguised as irritation, sadness, or a feeling of failure, transition produces struggles that often disrupt relationships. But the real issue is not other people. Nor is it the choices we have made. The issue is transitioning from one thing to another.

Like with most experiences of life, we can learn to work with the transition experience and diffuse some of its discomfort and pain. Here are six ways you can deal with transition and possibly limit its impact. 

1. Recognize transition and name iT.

Just when we think all is right with the world, transition can knock us to our knees. Even a wonderful change has a transition experience attached. A new baby comes in the home and is everything turned upside down — the transition this little life brings is so intense one can almost feel a guilty shame that they feel angry at what is happening. 

Or a bride comes home from her honeymoon. Everything she has hoped for is hers. All she expects is more happiness. So why does she feel edgy and anxious? She certainly can’t tell anyone, so she applies brighter lipstick and a smile. But a week of feeling touchy and self-protective can intensify into disillusionment quite quickly. What a relief to know she did not make a mistake; nothing is wrong with the new life she has entered. It’s simply a short time of transition unsettling her emotions.

Transition is not a spiritual flaw. It is not a mistake. It is transition. Name it. “Oh, I am feeling the transition.” Suddenly everything is in perspective.

In a tense moment, say, arriving home after church with a grumpy family, the recognition of transition might be to ask everyone to go to their room for ten minutes and then come to the kitchen for a treat. In a more serious transition, recognition can be lifesaving. 

My husband and I moved to a new church in a new city with hearts full of hope and plans. The first two years were rife with conflict, difficulties and disappointments. Our marriage began to suffer. I wondered whether God was still with us, whether we would make it. One morning over coffee Steve said to me, “This is not about God or our marriage. This is a very difficult transition!” Those words changed everything. Suddenly we began to understand what we were going through as a challenge of navigation. Within a month we had reoriented ourselves to what would be a lovely new normal with the congregation. We had not made a mistake. We just had a very hard transition.

2. Pay attention to physical and mental health problems.

Depending on the extent of the change and how each member of your family handles transition, you might find health concerns rising. A four-year-old might start wetting the bed. A teen withdraws. Your stomach aches. These issues need care and sometimes medical treatment. But these are likely to diminish as the transition eases. This isn’t the time to bring strict discipline to yourself or your family. A smile, a surprise ice cream treat, a game might do more to help your family reestablish normalcy than heavy handed behavioral demands. Everyone is hurting differently. Find out how each one is feeling, physically and emotionally. A little TLC might be all that is needed. 

3. Choose a couple new small routines and repeat them daily.

During significant change life loses its sense of consistency. Along with that seems to go meaning. What follows is paralysis, a way of avoiding discomfort. In this way, transition can rob a person of their personal power. The term sometimes used is “ego-disillusion.” It simply means losing the sense that you can make a significant contribution here in the new situation. What you’ve accomplished in the past seems lost. You’re not that person anymore. To begin rebuilding, start by choosing a small rhythm, and repeat it every day. It isn’t the big events that build a coherent life, but repeated patterns. Make your bed. Get a coffee at the corner café after lunch. Smile at the same person. Act. Repeat. Act. Repeat. These small repetitions don’t require much from us, but they shift us away from depression and paralysis. Soon you find you look forward to what the day holds.

4. Show up to things and stay in the room.

One of the hardest things to do is to walk into a room where you have no friends. The second hardest thing is to stay in that room. Sometimes when you try to fit in you blunder into an ill-fitting moment. My Steve became a Christian as a young husband. We began attending a small group where he, obviously, did not know “the rules.” Early on, the group leader suggested we all sing the hallelujah chorus before we began our meeting. Feeling suddenly able to contribute, Steve burst out into the hallelujah chorus from Handel’s “Messiah,” rather than the contemplative “hallelujah, hallelujah” which was being sung by the church at that time. We had a good laugh, but I know he felt dumb. Nevertheless, the next time that group met we joined them. It takes five years to have a five-year-old relationship. But it only takes a short time before you walk into a room and someone welcomes you by name. 

5. Watch for moments of grace and open your heart to them. 

Transition isn’t a spiritual problem. It cannot be avoided by intensified spiritual practices. It’s a human problem. Unavoidable and, like ocean waves, beyond our control. But we’re not alone in it. The Spirit of God is preparing the way. The Psalms say God leads the blind by a way they do not know. If you’re walking gently into the change you’ll discover glimmers or even flashes of grace. An unexpected connection will warm your heart. A song on the radio will bring tears to your eyes and peace to your soul. Remember that there is a pace to grace. Don’t push against it. Don’t force yourself or your family to get ahead of the pace of grace in their life. But as surely as the dawn comes so too will the flow of grace.

6. Lean into Love.

The person who most has your back is likely sitting at your breakfast table. Whoever that person is, throw your arms around them. Literally. Everyone needs a lot of tenderness when our souls are tentative. And so often it’s the ones closest to us that get our scratchiness. Forget about saving the world for a hot minute and lean deeply into the relationships that are already full of love. We can even do that over the internet. What a gift! And the greatest love we all walk in is the love of our Lord for our truest self. God is with you in your worst moments. The promise of the Lord’s presence is the only sure thing we know about our future. We are not alone on this dash across the transition street.

There are many other healthy practices to help calm a transition time. Such things as choosing the gentle path or finding one good moment and letting that be enough for today. Transition sometimes takes longer than we expect, but then the new normal is suddenly opened to us and we love it!

For more from Marilyn Elliott, pick up her book “YES!? A Field Guide for Those Answering a Call to Ministry” at seedbed.org.

Photos: Ljupco/Getty Images/Joe Vadilonga, Max Bender, Spenser Sembrat, Zero Take/Unsplash

This article was originally titled “Well, I Didn’t See THAT Coming!” in the May 2026 issue of The War Cry.