In the United Methodist Church, June is a month of change as pastors move to new churches. Following is an excerpt from the chapter on change from my new book, Getting to Good. If this is a season of change for you, take the time you need to let go so that you can grab hold of what is next!
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Change and Loss
Change is not a single event or emotion that we experience. It takes us time to process. The death of a spouse is an immense change. The surviving spouse does not grieve one day and then get on with a new way of living the next. It takes time, sometimes years, to adjust. A person is never exactly the same after this kind of loss. This is also true for changes we view as positive. A wedding is a singular moment that marks the beginning of a new form of relationship, but after my own wedding I remember days of saying to Tracy, “Are we really married?” Intellectually I knew it happened; emotionally it took time.
It takes time to come to terms with any change, but we experience emotions immediately. We feel sad or happy or angry or scared right now. At this moment. This means change is not something we really experience emotionally. Instead, we experience a variety of emotions throughout the change. Often, the first emotion we experience is loss. This has been my experience with my daughter. I’m sure she has a beautiful future in front of her, including an amazing few years of college. I am genuinely excited for what lies in store for her future. That last word is the key – future. She has not had those experiences yet. I cannot yet celebrate her first day of class, her first college job, her first new friendship, her first college dance performance, her first successful test, because those events haven’t happened yet. Instead, I have experienced many lasts. Her last night as a full-time resident of our house, her last day of the summer job, her last dance performance in high school… I am excited for her future, but right now I grieve the loss of what is now in the past.
Brene Brown quotes psychology professor Robert A Neimeyer writing, “A central process in grieving is the attempt to reaffirm or reconstruct a world of meaning that has been challenged by loss.” Emotionally, we don’t experience change. We experience the grief of losing what we have left behind. Then we face the challenge of change – of “reconstructing a world of meaning” – so that we can experience the positive of what has happened that is new. We can’t emotionally know or experience that until after we have gone through the loss of what we leave behind. This is why it can be so hard for us to let go. We have to let go of the old before we can experience the new.
Letting Go
I saw a monkey in the wild for the first time when I was on a mission trip in Nicaragua. A troop of howler monkeys lived near the village we were working in. The children of the village introduced us to the monkeys by demonstrating how they got their name. When the kids howled out to the monkeys, the monkeys enthusiastically returned their call. The monkeys were entertaining most of the time, but there were points where the loud howling became too much.
Even with the distraction, the howler monkeys were a joyful part of our experience. There are other monkeys in other parts of the world that people view as a nuisance instead of a joy. Villages and towns have encroached on the monkeys’ territory and the monkeys, searching for food and space, steal fruit and other food and terrorize the people. One solution villagers have used is to relocate the monkeys to another area. A simple and completely harmless method for trapping a monkey that needs to be moved has been used for centuries. It’s a three-step process: cut a small hole in the top of a gourd and hollowing it out, put some of the monkey’s favorite treats inside the gourd, and tie the gourd to a low branch on a tree. That’s it. When a monkey investigates the smells of the fresh food, it will wriggle its hand into the gourd to grab the food. The hole that has been carved is big enough for an open monkey hand to go in, but not big enough for a closed monkey fist to come out. The confused monkey wants the food badly enough that it won’t let go. It would rather hold the treat and stay stuck to the gourd than risk letting the treat go, leading to the final step: put the gourd-trapped monkey in a cage and take it to its new home.
I don’t know if this method of catching monkeys is still used. I do know that we can be a lot like monkeys. We can hold on so tightly to something or someone because we are afraid of letting go. We are afraid of the loss. We are afraid of the change. Holding on tight does not free us, though. It traps us. We lose our freedom to live into the future. If we want to experience the joy that can come from change, we have to be willing to let go of the past. Letting go does not mean forever forgetting any more than the Israelites forgot the Exodus. It means giving thanks for what has been, taking a deep breath, and moving into the uncertainty of what lies ahead.
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