Times of change in our lives can be unnerving.  Sometimes change comes subtly.  We hardly notice things are different until one day we realize our lives no longer make sense.  At other times change can be convulsive and even violent in its turbulent transformation.  We wonder if we’ll survive.

Change is unsettling.  Our job loses meaning and we need to move on—or perhaps we find ourselves fired.  Our relationships sour or our marriages are empty and we sense that deeper issues lurk beneath the surface.  Our daily living is not wonderful enough to encompass the fullness of our identity, and we intuit that we’re so much more than we allow.  When these life tremors occur, uneasiness permeates our being.

If we refuse to change, our problems do not go away.  They instead get worse—even catastrophic.  Perhaps our drinking or other addictions that once made life possible are now life-threatening.  Perhaps our friendships or other intimate relationships seem empty and echo the despair of our childhood.  Our love aches for expression and cannot find a home.  Perhaps depression or other emotional problems set in as we deny the sad reality of our abandoned inner child and the neglect we endured long ago.  We feel chronically unworthy of life’s blessings and nurturance.

These painful symptoms all indicate a life aching to break free from the frozen constraints of psychic despair.  We hit a wall.  A terrifying reality confronts us.  We must change—or we’ll die.

When the ice on a lake breaks up in late Winter, it cracks and groans.  With time and patience, the waters thaw—fluid, alive.  Changing from a frozen, outworn way of being may be painful and fraught with uncertainty, but, as in Nature, renewing life is in us, directing our course.  Life knows where we are going—life is ahead!  If we yield to the rhythm of Nature and dare to change, new life will emerge.  We call this Spring.