on change, transitions, and waiting rooms.

I’m currently sitting in a lobby of the Mayo Clinic – one of the happiest and saddest places in the world, I think. The man in front of me has his head rested against the wall, his eyes closed, and he radiates exhaustion. His whole self seems to beg the question, “how did I get here?”

It’s funny how you can visit a hospital one day and simultaneously see someone in the midst of great joy and another in a pit of deep despair. There is sickness, yes, but there is also healing. There is death, yes, but there is also new life. Every time I happen to find myself in a waiting room I am always reminded, in the most poignant of ways, of how lucky I am that I’m not seeking rest from leaning my head up against the wall. I find myself glassy-eyed and anxious not because my life has taken an unexpected decline, but because I suddenly find myself so aware of how good my life is that I want to make sure I’m cherishing it as much as I possibly can.

I wrote this week about how friendships change after college, and the transition that takes place after you are all no longer living in the same dorm building (you can find that here). It’s been an extremely hard lesson to learn, and at times it honestly feels like I’ve experienced a loss. But sitting here, in the lobby of a hospital, watching strangers deal with gains and losses, watching some receive a gift and others lose something, I am reminded that with every loss, there is a new beginning.

This is a lesson I swear I’ve tried to learn at least 50 times – and every time I experience a transition the lesson never gets easier to learn. “But when am I going to arrive?!” I want to yell, “When am I just going to have to stop learning things? When I’m 23?” I don’t know why I have this notion that letting go and receiving new things will get any easier, because the truth is I don’t think it will. Our whole lives, from the day we are born until the day we die, will be a dance of give and take, give and take, give and take. And while the “take” part of that can feel like the worst ever, usually God in his amazing grace, gives us something incredible.

In a few short weeks, all the beautiful red, orange and purple leaves will fall off and the trees will be bare. It will suck. And when I think about the leaves, and the change the represent, I want to move to a place where there is fall all the time and the only -40 degree weather that exists is in horror stories told around the campfire. I feel this way every time fall rolls around until I’m reminded, usually by a friend way wiser than me, that this is necessary for new leaves to form. This change is essential in providing the bloom and seasons I’ve come to love so much (with the exception of winter we still aren’t friends yet). And so is true with life, too. Change is intimidating, yes, but it seems that literally every where I turn God is reminding me that it is a beautiful thing.

I am by no means at peace with all of this – the fact that no matter how many times I hold things in my clenched fists and say “nope sorry God this thing is staying right here in my hand where I will probably suffocate it ha ha ha oops!” – so if any of you are, text me and tell me how you do it, okay?

Maddi Wagner