Lately, there has been a lot of talk about transition. Transition in most cases is good. Many times it involves stepping out of old mindsets and into new ones. Transition usually brings growth. Transition is good. Transition is hard. Even when I know that I am doing something beneficial, stepping out into the unknown is usually scary. My greatest insecurities are triggered while I find a new normal.
One of the things that we don’t talk about is the ripple effect of transition. I have both caused and felt this ripple. Most of the time, my decisions don’t just affect me. If I lived in a bubble, they might, but alas, I don’t. Seemingly innocuous decisions can still affect those around us. . Then there are the bigger decisions of transition. When I made the decision to move to northern California for ministry school, my decision had a rather large ripple effect. My employer had to find someone to replace me, my mom had to find a new place to live, and my friends had to adjust to me living 1,500 miles away. Unfortunately, not all of my relationships survived the ripples. All of that is part of the transition.
What about when someone else’s transition affects you?
Two weeks ago, my California best friend moved ten hours away. To say I miss her is an understatement of epic proportions. That’s real. That’s raw. I support her with every fiber of my being. I actually agree with her decision. I probably knew she was going to leave before she did. I’ve always had a “sense” about these things; however, it doesn’t change the fact that it sucks. Before she left, she was staying with me for a couple of weeks. Then we had the fire and evacuation, and everything has felt chaotic since.
We have walked through a lot of the transition together. We talk pretty regularly and know what is going on in each other’s lives, but here’s the thing: while she is creating a new normal in a new city, I am also having to create a new normal here. We went from seeing each other regularly to not at all. I am still trying to wrap my head around the fact that she isn’t just going to walk through my front door. I still invite her to dinner parties even though she is hundreds of miles away, because I just can’t not invite her. Yes, my heart is sad that I don’t have my bestie around to go get coffee with whenever, but at the same time, I celebrate her and the risks she is taking to live her best life.
So how do we deal with the ripple effect? How do we navigate our own new normals while still trying to be supportive of the new normals that caused the ripples? I think the most important part of it is being honest with ourselves and with them. Mel knows I miss her like crazy. I don’t tell her that to guilt her. She also knows I support her and celebrate her, but I am honest with her. Part of me DOES wish she was still here…sitting on my couch watching a movie and eating chocolate chip cookies. However, a bigger part of me wants to see her fly and to see her thrive. I want her to live her best life even when that life is hours away from where I am. So here we are finding our new normals together. Now our normals look like FaceTime dates and celebrating each other from afar. It looks like planning trips to meet halfway to spend a weekend together. It looks like crying at 3:00 a.m. when I can’t sleep again and I’m missing her. That part will get easier as the normals become, well, normal. But there won’t be a point where I don’t miss her. She’s my framily (yes, framily), my birthday buddy, my sister. She’s the one who basically got me through the second year of ministry school, has championed me, yelled at me and fed me when I was too tired (or broke) to feed myself. That is a friendship that distance cannot touch. We are intentional and find ways to make it work and celebrate each other.
Sometimes the ripples feel like waves that are going to overwhelm and drown, but I guess in the end, we will just learn how to ride those waves to find new adventure. We still have years worth of memories to make with each other. And seeing someone I love so much chase her dreams and begin to fly to new heights is the reason I can be okay with the ripples. Seeing my best friend thrive just makes it all #worthit.
-Tabitha Smith
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