Over this past weekend my mother came to visit. So naturally, I took to making sure that the house was ready for a visitor. I was doing all the normal things. Clearing out the back the kitchen of extra piles up stuff. Washing the bedding and cleaning the guest bedroom. Husband and son doing random to do list stuff. I even rearranged the dining room. Yeah, I am that kind of person. As I was cleaning, I also noticed things that I had not taken care of in a while. I’m sure we’ve all been there.

As I cleaned a question popped into my mind. How many hours do I have outside of my job? I’m not gonna tell you how many because to me it was ridiculous. And here’s why. It really doesn’t matter how many hours I have or you have. The point was I saw the hours and realize how much time I waste. Sometimes simple questions can cause us to take inventory of our lives. I’ve recently been feeling the need to organize and put things in order.

I said in a CTR ( Community Temperature Reading) for the section called – “I’ve noticed” – I said this: “the desire to be organized and in order finally falling into place again. It feels like things have been out of sorts and in the shifting and transition phase for quite some time.”

2020 was a year of transition and it hasn’t felt like it had stopped, at least for me, until this past Sunday. Let me explain a bit. A transition is a change. To me a transition is a time or phase of life that is continually moving forward, shifting as it goes. In hebrew thought a transition has the elements of listen and repeat. It literally means passage, as a transition is a passage from one state of being to another. They are all very similar. I think you get the point.

Side note: Isn’t it intriguing that in hebrew, the word transition has elements of listen and repeat. When I listen and repeat what I’ve heard, I often learn more and am able to move on quicker or through with less resistance.

Transition is the beautiful season when God strips off what is old to welcome the new.

-The Confident Women Co.

Since 2020, so many changes have happened it is almost like I’ve been here but not been here. Obviously, I am still living my life but my “normal” had become less normal to me. I was asked a question several weeks ago, “What do you think about when no one else is around?” It took me three weeks to answer this question. My answer: I think about organizing and getting things in order. Like with everything. But because transistion has been the “listen and repeat” of my life since 2020. I literally have had to “work on organizing” while not seeing “completion” for 4 years.

All of 2020 was a major upheaval and new changes: At the end of 2019 – on the homefront, we received our first granddaughter and like literally the last days of 2019, I stepped down as the NextGen Pastor. I led the youth ministry for 7 years. In 2020, the batton was passed to another. It seemed that everything that was – wasn’t, except for the location. I spent 2020 being “whatever was necessary” for our church. We walked through covid, a derecho, and then at our pastor stepped down and I ended up being the interim pastor through the transition. It was a running head long into the dust of a year, the kind when you start to run and catch your stride but you trip and then stumble all the way through the rest of the race. Yeah… that is what 2020 felt like for me. At the end of 2020 – our new pastors were installed and we moved into the next year.

In 2021 was another year of upheaval and change: Living through and in transition can be exhilarating and also stretching and sad in some ways. On the home front, we received our second granddaughter and their family moved 20 mins away. That is not far but the last 2 years she had been on my daily route to work and home. I was also navigating my grandmother entering dimentia and her health declining. I was having to take care of all of her paperworks being her POA. In September, my husband was hospitalized with double pnuemonia. After he has some tests and they said, “we cant even tell you ever smoked your lungs are so clear.” At the end of the year, we paid off our house and became debt free. At Church, we walked through people leaving because the old pastor left. People leaving because the new pastor came. People leaving because they were hurt by this or that. Others stepping down from places just cause they were tired, done, or over it. We had alot of people shifting in that time frame. We also shifted alot in how we did work-life as a team. All the old ways were revisited, like how we did things and how we handle thing. We got things like clarified job descriptions. The table of truth was instituted and we all became more real that year with eachother. We moved our office space back to the church. Remember that quote above: God strips off what is old to welcome the new. I learned alot through crying it out with the Lord that year. I learned that legitimate suffering is when you walk by faith through the good, bad, and the ugly with Jesus, in realness.

If you live long enough you will bleed, you will cry, you will hurt and God is still God in that!

– Matt Chandler

2022 just brought more transition. On the home front, my grandmother passed away in January. In September we bought a new car in cash. My husband connected with his olderst son for the first time in person. And our 3rd grandchild, a grandson was born in Dec. That year was alot of taking care of all of grandma’s end of life things which took almost the whole year. Alot of emotional uprooting of junk that had to go. Good friends moved away in May and others stepped down in June. We moved the offices again to the original space that the building has built for it, which felt like going home. So that was nice. We gained a new team member in July. We gained some new processes. There was alot of refining and fixing in the back ground of church. Some of which felt like it was getting worse and worse and not panning out clear.

2023 still more transition. On the home front, our daughter and her family moved 5 mins up the road from us. So that was a blessing. In September my husband received a whole body bone healing. At church, in March, we shifted again to a new system – trying to clean up a frustrating process. Which has, as of Sunday, been completed.

I finally feel like I am somewhat in order and organized. My friend Jen, who works closely by my side at the church ordered us planners for 2024. Hence the start of this blog. How many hours do you have that are wasted? I believe God has been preparing us. Readying us for a move of the Spirit. We had to navigate all this change, steward it well, and move as He moved, and shift as He shifted all while keeping a humble and soft heart toward His people.

So I encourage you. If you are in transition: ENDURE.

Colossians 1:10-12 so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, ¹¹ being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, ¹² and giving joyful thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of his holy people in the kingdom of light.

I look back because it is worth knowing from where you are coming, what you have come through, and how it has been going. Sometimes when we are in the middle – we can not see and we stop short and lose heart. We can give up. But quick reflections help with perspective. God is good. I am excited for the way I will get to organize and put things in order in this next season. I also look forward to how I will utilize those hours for organizing and ordering lol since if sense the 4 years of seemly unending upheaval is finally come to an end.

Until the next reflect…

Thanks for Listening,

Starla Smith