Caring Heart: Transitions are the Pits

With the start of school, it was a no-brainer to choose this meditation for this week.

Transitions are the pits!

Oh how I hate transitions!  It doesn't seem to matter what it is a transition from, or what it is a transition to.  They are always the pits. She just struggles so much with change.  Who can blame her, given all the traumatic changes in her life.  But oh how I hate them.  The last week of school and the first week of vacation.  The last week of vacation and the first week of school.  Sometimes I'd like to run away those weeks.  A new minister.  A new neighbor.  Anything new throws her.  And when it is a new case worker or therapist it's ten times as bad! It takes her so long to feel comfortable with new patterns and schedules, and people. But the school year is definitely the worst.  She loses so much to the transitions.  The first two months are her settling in, the last two months she is dreading the end of one class and fearing the new one to come.  Out of the nine months of school she winds up with barely four or five in the middle when she is on track. Help her navigate the transitions in her life.  Help me lead her, show her, and most of all... teach me how to help her feel safe even in the middle of change. 

Excerpted from "The Caring Heart Speaks: Meditations for foster, kinship, and adoptive parents" by Gail Underwood Parker   Artwork by Anna Parker David from the book cover.