God, What are you Doing?
What do you do when your season starts to shift? How do you navigate the tension of transition?
Grief is weird. But we must grieve in order to heal.In the summer of 2021, I was in Georgia with some of my closest friends. Since then, we’ve each transitioned into different life stages—whether from singleness to marriage, moving to new cities, or stepping into parenthood. The young adult seasons of life in the Lord are so stretching and reforming. During this time (if you allow Him to do the work), you begin to learn what it truly looks like to follow Him, to become like Him. You discover your giftings, your calling, and the purpose God has for your life—and then you have to figure out: How do I walk in it?
The twenty-something years are vital for laying the foundation of your faith and learning that no matter what happens in the natural realm—your circumstances—you can have confidence in who God says He is, and who He says you are.
I asked the Lord, why do I feel sad? He whispered, “Whenever you lose something valuable, the sadness is evident that you loved it.” That season was deeply loved. It's easy to believe that nothing will ever be as good as it is right now. I had no idea when God moved me to Dallas in 2022 the incredible journey I was about to embark on—the exponential growth, the richness of community, the wild God stories, and the life-changing encounters with Him that were ahead.
But that’s the thing: God takes us from glory to glory, strength to strength. There is always light and joy to be found in every season—especially in the tension. So I can trust that in every season shift and transition, the fingerprints of God’s goodness will be all over it. I have a history with Him, and I can trust Him with what I can’t yet see.
In previous seasons of transition, it was so hard for me to embrace change. It felt like a constant internal battle between my past experience and where God was calling me to live. We were never meant to ever feel fear, anxiety, or worry. Even going back to the garden in Genesis, we were meant to walk in perfect fellowship and communion with the Father. How much more in the new covenant is it possible when we learn to believe what the bible says? Matthew 6:24-32 says,
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?
And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear? For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”
I used to carry sadness, insecurity, hopelessness, and depression. The weight of transition can crush you—if you let it. Or, you can embrace the pressure and allow God to form you in the crushing. What I’ve learned about transition is that you’re never meant to stay in the old wineskin. The new wine must be poured into a new wineskin.
God has been speaking a lot of metaphors to me lately, and I think I am loving it. One day, He told me to look up the process of metamorphosis. And I replied, God, a butterfly? Really? That is so basic. But the process is actually so insightful to the season He had me in and even has me in now.
The caterpillar completely sheds the entirety of its old self. The caterpillar and the butterfly cannot exist at the same time. The caterpillar’s old self undergoes a complete transformation into a completely new self, an entirely new being.
It is completely natural to face transition. We all face transition at some point. From college into young adulthood has been the hardest season.
A season of undoing.
A season of becoming.
Even when your best friends turn into wives, you lose a part of them. The friendship changes. But that doesn’t mean that the change is bad. It's inevitable. We cannot embrace the new by holding on to what has passed.
Psalm 27:13 says, “I remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living. Wait for the Lord; be strong and take heart and wait for the Lord.”
Wait can be translated in the Hebrew text to Yachal; which can also mean hope or hopeful expectation. It is not a coincidence that wait and hope coincide.
Romans 5:3-5 AMP “Such hope [in God’s promises] never disappoints us, because God’s love has been abundantly poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.”
To hope in the personification of hope will never disappoint You. That doesn’t take away the fact that you won’t feel disappointed sometimes. That’s okay. It is what you do with the disappointment, that matters. Wrestle with Him within the transition. Hope with Him again. You will see the goodness of God in the Land of the living. He will not disappoint you. It just may not look like how you thought it would, but it will be better.
