Don’t Glue Leaves on Trees: responses to change

Many things interrupt our lives: a flat tire, losing our keys, unexpected traffic when we haven’t allowed extra time, a water heater having to be replaced, losing a job, moving, our house being damaged or destroyed by fire or storm, divorce, or the death of a loved one.

Each is a loss, bringing unexpected change. We have no choice in many of these, but we have choices in how we respond to them.

1. Despair.
2. Hope.
3. Both.

Grieving can take minutes or years. Or we can be crippled and never return to hope.

Transition is a process that admits pain and keeps hope.

William Bridges developed a model that recognizes transition is different to change.

Change is outside of a person. It’s what happens to us.

Transition is an inside job. It’s how I respond to change.

His thinking has been helpful to me. Notice and remember this chart:

Transition begins with an ending. We lose something. There’s an ending of a thing, a relationship, or a person. We lost. Transition is letting go, realizing what we lost can never be recovered — whether it is five minutes looking for lost keys or the life of a loved one.

We can’t skip pain and grief and get to the new beginning.

Notice on the chart — the different stages aren’t in neat 1, 2, 3 steps. At both ends of the chart, there’s some of each stage. There will be days when we are sad thinking of our loss, giddy when we dream about our New Beginning, and depressed and walking around in circles because it seems our New Beginning will never arrive.

William Bridges said,

All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind is part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter into another.

A good transition brings a new beginning.

The key to the process is the middle part of the chart: The Neutral Zone.

It’s in this time — after loss and before the sun shines and hope is the predominant attitude — that the work is done.

In the Neutral Zone, people walk around in circles, lose or never have hope, complain about the misery, wish for the time before the loss, and try to get things back to “the way they used to be.”

Mr. Bridges says trying to restore things to their former state is like taking dry, dead leaves in one hand and a tube of Elmer’s Glue in the other and attempting to glue them back on the tree.

Someone asks, “What are you doing.”

You reply, “I like trees with leaves on them. I like it the way it used to be. I’m going to glue the leaves back on the trees.”

It won’t work.

Mr. Bridges’ approach gives hope. You don’t have to do much during winter while the leaves are gone. Realize the transition will take time. Just don’t freeze to death. That’s your basic job. Take care of yourself. Don’t freeze to death. Spring will come. Leaves will reappear on trees. Flowers will bloom. There’ll be another productive season. It’ll never be like it used to be. It could be better. But there will be a new beginning.

The children of Israel didn’t like the journey to the Promised Land. They didn’t like the food. They turned against their leaders. They preferred slavery in Egypt to the journey to the land of milk and honey.

They were not the first or the last to have that outlook.

Some modern evidences of trying to skip the Neutral Zone:

• A quick marriage after the divorce or death of a spouse.
• Immediately finding a preacher after the death or departure of a preacher when there had been no preparation for the departure of the last preacher.
• Refusing to acknowledge there’s been hurt and not allowing for time to heal after a major church fuss or other traumatic event in a congregation.

Here are some ways to help the journey through The Neutral Zone:

1. Permit and encourage people to express their hopes, fears, and all feelings in a safe place. I lead a Transition Monitoring Team in interim churches, and we practice this once a month. Transition Monitoring Team
2. Permit others to travel at different speeds and be at different places during the journey, and don’t try to fix them.
3. I recommend professional Christian counseling. I see a counselor often and encourage others to do the same.
4. Recognize that time in the hospital isn’t wasted after an accident or when recovering from a sickness. That isn’t the time to start a new job or feel defeated because you aren’t working overtime at your present job.
5. Read and discuss good books relating to your present situation. You’ll learn or be reminded that people going through a difficult time aren’t weird or defeated. You can discover heroes, mentors, and guides who have traveled a similar road and found A New Beginning.
6. Attend workshops and join groups traveling a similar road. An excellent one is Dean Miller’s Widowhood Workshop

Helpful books:

Transitions, William Bridges
Managing Transitions, William Bridges
The Way of Transition, William Bridges
Good Grief, Granger Westburg
Tear Soup, Pat Schwiebert and Chuck DeKlyen

William Bridges:

Transition is like a low pressure area on the organizational weather map. It attracts all the storms and conflicts in the area, past as well as present. This is because transition “decompresses” an organization. Many of the barriers that held things in check come down. Old grievances resurface. Old scars start to ache. Old skeletons come tumbling out of closets.

That’s horrible! Paul disagrees, Romans 5:1-5:

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

Suffering is the stuff that hope is made of. Don’t leave an essential ingredient out of the recipe, and expect a great dessert.