When our farm girl, our sixth, packs her bags to leave just past midnight, none of us say it, but we all know: this is a bit of a dry run for what’s actually coming.

What no one tells you as you become a mother, that as the labor never ends, neither do the transitions. Changes are rapid & the intensity unexpected & you have to remember to breathe.  

This time, she’s catching a red-eye flight to Nicaragua to work alongside the local church for the next week.

But come the end of month, she’ll packs her bags for the last time, to catch her dad and I waving in her rearview mirror as she turns at the end of the farm laneway and heads off to university for the next four years. Sure, we know, she’ll be come home to visit…  

But when a child moves away from home only to return a visitor, there’s a missing ache that comes home to roost much like a permanent guest in a parents’ emptying nest.  

I help her pack dresses for Nicaraguan church and she asks me if she can borrow a belt for her pants and if I think this white-T goes right with a sunny bright gingham, and how did we get here so fast?  

She will be our sixth to take wing. 

At first, there was the just wave of kids off to university, then there were vows and wedding aisles, and then came house warming gifts and permanently empty rooms here, and now I bravely laugh that we need an old house like an accordion: expanding in celebration when they all come home, contracting in a chorus of comfort  when they all depart and we feel the ache again.

When I first became a mother — the very last part of active labor, with all of the contractions, was the most intense and painful — the stage referred to as transition.  

Come September, we will contract from a rowdy family of 9 about splitting this old farmhouse at the seams,  and transition down to a wee family of 3, with only one little 9-year-old daughter kissing us good night and crawling into bed here under our roof.

“Through every transition, your work is to find a position that lets you hold  interior calm and stillness.“

I remember reading, as a first time mother,  preparing to labor and deliver  how “for many women, the transition phase is the most challenging part of labour, as the rapid changes and intensity of labour at this time, leave not much relief from pain and discomfort between contractions. This can make it very difficult to remain calm and focused.”

What no one tells you as you become a mother, that as the labor never ends, neither do the transitions.

Changes are rapid and the intensity unexpected and you have to remember to breathe.

When she hauls her carryon up the stairs just before midnight, I ask her if she has her passport tucked away safe, and if she has a sweater for the plane, and she has a grin and a hug for me and she’s tucked perfectly safe in my arms now for 18 years and here we are holding on and letting go and this is the only way we can carry on.

Through every transition, your work is to find a position that lets you hold  interior calm and stillness.

I stood long at the window staring out into the dark after she was gone.

“The way you win the race, is to know when to transition to stillness. In the whirl of change: The posture of interior stillness is a posture of strength.“

I’d watched it just the week before, an Italian bicyclist, Michael Guerra, while pedalling down a hill, calmly, mid-race, unclip his shoes from his pedals, and move himself into a horizontal, planking position, feet now still and straight out behind him, like the stillness of a soaring wing.  

From whatever the the posture on the seat, to whatever the strategy of shifting gears, physics in cycling can determine a win or a loss. While other cyclists madly expended energy and pedal wildly on, Guerra transitioned to the stillness of a stretched out posture of surrender — and that position of stillness turns out to be far more aerodynamic.  And Guerra ends up surpassing furiously pedalling cyclist after cyclist. While Guerra’s upper body and arms are in similar positions as that of other cyclists, it’s the fact that the pedalling cyclists cannot create more energy than the drag of their legs…  But Guerra knew how, at just the right time:  

Moving to stillness, finding a position of surrender — erases all drag and resistance.  

“Interior stillness means you’ve stopped resisting transition, but are insisting on transformation. “

It’s counter-intuitive and paradoxical, but fighting forward, pedalling hard, pushing furiously — can actually be creating drag and resistance.

When the race shifts, and the pace picks up going downhill — transitioning to stillness is the most efficient way to win.

 The way you win the race, is to know when to transition to stillness.

Yet not to be fooled: Guerra’s posture of stillness, planking horizontally over the seat of his bike, is no easy, amateur position to maintain, but takes discipline, muscle, fortitude, focus and practice.

In the whirl of change: The posture of interior stillness is a posture of strength.

When you still… God moves  painful transitions into personal transformation.

Interior stillness takes great interior strength — but gives you great strength for your exterior world.  Your exterior strength is in your interior stillness.

Because when you are still in your soul, you are in a posture of surrender to receive the power of God in your life.  Interior stillness means you’ve stopped resisting transition, but are insisting on transformation.

When you still… God moves  painful transitions into personal transformation.

The centre of the hurricane is still always still. Through every transition, if you stay centred on what is central, you can still stay steady and strong.

I listened to a man last week talk about finding his way through a completely disorienting, upending life transition and he said the only way through was to stay in the eye of the hurricane.

It’s true, and you can feel it: The centre of the hurricane is still always still.

Through every transition, if you stay centred on what is central, you can still stay steady and strong.  There is a centre that is the unmoveable core of the cosmos:  “Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him; do not fret…” Ps. 37:7

I do not want to count how many days there will still be left in August, after our farm girl returns from Nicaragua, or how many days are still left before she packs up for university, carrying that last box out the door. 

I don’t want to focus on what’s shifting and changing and slipping away forever.  After more than two and a half decades of mothering, I still feel it— how these very last parts of active labor can be the most intense and painfully bittersweet — all these stages of transition.

“You will handle change as well as you’re still rooted in an unchanging centre. “

And, like labor, the way to transition and deliver, is to surrender to whatever comes.

And the life-transitions keep coming, and I keep trying to remember to breathe with just that one line:

You will handle change as well as you’re still rooted in an unchanging centre. 

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