Episodes: Navigating Life’s Transitions

This is horrible!

Those are the words I heard myself say to my wife in private shortly after our oldest daughter and her husband proudly announced to us that they were expecting their first child – our first grandchild. We were all together for the Fourth of July holiday at our family’s cabin on Big Bear Lake in Southern California. The sky was clear, the day warm, and the lake a beautiful blue. We had just returned from a sweet time of enjoying each other’s company on a boat ride, when with huge grins on their faces, they presented my wife with a little baby t-shirt printed with the word that melts the heart of every middle-aged woman, "Grandma."

When they gleefully handed me my corresponding little “Grandpa” shirt, I was trying desperately to look excited and to force happy sounds out of my mouth. But my mind was a swirling mess of conflicting thoughts and my heart was twisting itself into a pretzel trying to sort out the emotions I was experiencing. It was while I was still in this state of confusion that those three incongruent words escaped my lips, and before I could recapture them, made their way to my wife’s ears.

I didn’t really mean what I said. It was not surprising that after two and a half years of marriage, my daughter and her husband would be starting a family. And I was deeply and genuinely happy for them. I was also thrilled to look into my wife’s beaming face. The problem was me.

The new episodes of my life always take me by surprise and I am never ready.

Becoming a grandfather is a natural and joyful phase of life, but for me it was the latest in a long series of transition points that have required me to let go of life as I knew it and embrace a new definition of my life that I did not feel adequately prepared for – even if I had known it was coming.

Life is a series of endings and beginnings – episodic. And the intersections are almost always a challenge to navigate.

They usually make me feel like I’m in the lobby between the acts of a play I’ve been enjoying. I applauded as the curtain came down, dried my eyes from the emotion the story had stirred, and I’m waiting in line at the snack bar when the lighting flickers signaling that the curtain is about to rise on new developments in the script. But now I’m scrambling, certain I cannot make it back to my seat in time and part of me not sure I even want to.

I had enjoyed the previous act so much, had developed a rapport with the characters, and was comfortable with the ending I was projecting in my own mind. But what if the author takes things in an unanticipated direction? What if something tragic happens to a character I’m emotionally invested in? What if the finale doesn’t live up to my expectations? Maybe I should just pack up my satisfaction over what I’ve already experienced along with my anticipated version of the ending and head for the door. Wouldn’t that be better than racing back to my row, tripping over people’s feet in the dark as I try to locate my seat, and risk trusting the storyteller?

But that’s what life’s all about isn’t it – trusting the Storyteller?