It’s August! I love the back-to-school sales, the school-supply aisles, and—yes—buying a new outfit. I’m not a school kid anymore, but I can still enjoy the feeling of fresh beginnings and infinite possibilities that come with a new season. Maybe you aren’t buying crayons and composition notebooks anymore. Maybe your babies have babies of their own. But there’s still something about August that whispers: “You can begin again.”

Back-to-school time has always felt a little like New Year’s to me. There is change in the air. Football season is coming. The holidays are right around the corner. The light begins to shift, the days slowly shorten, and another season waits for us.

How does that feel to you?
Are you excited?
Do you dread it?
Or—like so many things in life—is it a little bit of both?

We all have feelings about change. Some changes are eagerly anticipated. Others arrive without an invitation. So try this thought on: Change is a gift.

Not because everything that changes is good. It isn’t. Some changes break our hearts. Some disappoint us. Some frighten us. Some are changes we would never, ever have chosen. But change reminds us of something important:

This moment will not last forever.
Without change, a toothache would go on forever.
An empty checking account could never be filled again.
Winter would never become spring.
And perhaps we wouldn’t treasure ordinary moments with the people we love quite so fiercely if we believed they would always remain exactly as they are.

Change gives preciousness to the present.

Change gives us another gift: the opportunity to choose what we will create next. This is the heart of Creator-Based® living.

Being the creator of your life experience does not mean that you created every circumstance that has happened to you. You didn’t. And it certainly doesn’t mean pretending something painful doesn’t hurt or putting a happy face over grief. It means remembering that even when you cannot choose what is happening around you, there are still things that belong to you.
Your breath.
Your response.
Your attention.
Your next thought.
Your next small action.
Your willingness to ask for help.
Your capacity to love.
Your relationship with God.
Your ability to begin again.

So how do we embrace change without pretending that every change is wonderful? Here are two ideas to play with this week.

1. Practice noticing what is precious because it is temporary.
Take five minutes—or even five breaths—and notice something good that is here right now.
The scent of a rose. Fresh sheets. A grandchild’s hand in yours. A quiet cup of something warm. An unexpected “I’m sorry.” The sound of someone you love laughing in the next room. A breeze through an open window.
Don’t rush past it.
Let yourself really receive it.
Notice what happens in your body when you slow down enough to savor something good.
You don’t have to cling to the moment.
Simply be there for it.
Present.
2. Try curiosity: what might this change offer you?
Ask yourself, “What is still mine to choose here?
Perhaps unemployment teaches you something about courage—or perhaps the lesson doesn’t reveal itself for years.
Perhaps an injury invites you to slow down and receive help.
Perhaps an adult child chooses a life very different from the one you imagined, and you discover a deeper kind of love: loving someone for who they are rather than for how closely their choices resemble your dreams.

Sometimes we recognize the gift immediately. Sometimes it takes years, and sometimes the gift isn’t in what happened at all.
Sometimes the gift is in who we choose to become as we walk through it.

That is the kind of change I want to embrace, not a forced “Everything is wonderful!” but a grounded, hopeful:
This is where I am, in my messy middle. God is still here. I am still here. Something new can be created from this place.”

You don’t have to love every change that comes.
You don’t even have to understand it yet.
But perhaps this week you can become curious.
Change is a gift.
Because August isn’t only for children with new backpacks and freshly sharpened pencils.
It’s for us, too. A new season is beginning.
And, my friend, so can you.

All my love,
Your Companion in creation and coaching,

Beth