It’s almost the end of summer, and I don’t know about you, but I think a lot of us are ready for a change.
It’s been hot. Really hot. And here in Hawaii, we just went through a weekend of hurricane watch.
Thankfully, we escaped without any major damage, but plenty of people weren’t so lucky. There were downed trees, power lines, flooding, and all the disruption and fear that comes with a storm.
And then I watched the national news, and natural disasters were everywhere. Hurricanes. Floods. Record-breaking heat waves. Fires. Disaster after disaster.
At some point, it almost stops feeling like news.
And it got me thinking about seasons… not just the literal ones.
Because we all go through “seasons” in our lives that we desperately want to end.
I have several friends and clients going through incredibly difficult things right now. Divorce. Breakups. Cancer treatments. Job loss. Financial hardship. Grief. Illness.
Life, death, heartbreak, uncertainty. All of it is very real. And very human.
One friend who is going through a devastating divorce after discovering years of her husband’s infidelity recently posted something that stopped me in my tracks:
“Can someone give me an ETA on ‘This too shall pass?’”
Because when we’re in the middle of something painful, it can be almost impossible to imagine feeling differently.
We don’t just think, I’m sad.
We think, I am always going to be sad.
We don’t think, I’m scared about what happens next.
We think, I will always be scared.
We take the present and project it indefinitely into the future.
I was reminded of this recently when I started feeling light-headed, dizzy, and foggy a few days ago.
At first I thought I was coming down with the flu. When no other symptoms appeared, naturally, my brain went straight to: Well, I guess I have a brain tumor.
(My brain is nothing if not an efficient catastrophizer.)
But I had just gotten a glowing report after my annual physical. And then, I remembered that I’d recently started this new medication. That’s when I double-checked the label and saw the warning:
May cause dizziness.
But before that confirmation/validation, I was thinking, “OMG. Is this the rest of my life?”
And that’s what we do when we’re uncomfortable.
When we’re hurting, it’s hard to imagine life without the pain.
When we’re lonely, it’s hard to imagine feeling connected again.
When we’re grieving, it’s hard to imagine finding joy.
When we’re unemployed, it’s hard to imagine someone will hire us again.
We mistake a “season” for forever.
But seasons change.
I know this because I’ve lived through my own fair share of job loss, heartbreak, and the loss of people I loved. And I often found comfort when my dad would tell me, “This too shall pass.”
But sometimes even those wonderful words of wisdom aren’t enough.
So here’s another option: Allow yourself to feel all the feelings and tell yourself:
I know this is really hard, and you don’t have to know how to fix it all today.
Because we don’t always get an ETA on the end of our suffering.
We don’t know when the job will come.
We don’t know when the divorce will be final.
We don’t know when our heart will hurt less.
But we can know something else.
We will not always be exactly where we are right now.
Change is the only certainty.
Everything changes.
The weather. Our circumstances. And, perhaps most importantly, we change.
We adapt.
We learn.
We heal.
Sometimes life gets better in ways we never could have predicted.
Sometimes it doesn’t look the way we hoped it would, but we discover that we are stronger than we thought.
And sometimes the change is so gradual that we don’t even notice it happening.
Until one day, we look up and realize:
The storm is over.
The air feels different.
The season has changed.
Maybe that’s the real meaning of “This Too Shall Pass.”
Not that everything will magically be okay.
Not that every loss will be replaced.
But it’s not your whole story. It’s just a chapter.
So if you’re in a difficult season right now, you don’t have to know when the season will change.
You just have to focus on today.
And sometimes that’s enough.
Because one day, while we are busy waiting for the storm to pass, we look up and realize we’re already standing in the sunshine.
Happy Wednesday!
Jackie
