Transitioning Life’s Chapters

I believe I am not alone in stating that 2020 hit me like a brick. 

Toward the end of 2019, I was navigating a major career change with all of the stress and separations that come along with that, and I learned I was pregnant. We moved out of our city apartment to live in our home on the East end of Long Island full time to reassess and reinvent our life as a family. 

And then, COVID-19. Life paused. Or did it?

The past year has been one long transition away from a life I thought I had perfectly designed toward…I wasn’t sure. The ensuing uncertainty and identity crisis were not completely new territory, but there was a lot more responsibility on the line with a husband, two children and one on the way. I was no longer in my teens, twenties, or early thirties when I welcomed dramatic change with great expectation, passion, and hunger. The pandemic was more like an apex to an already challenging, unplanned, and unprecedented time in my life. If I was skirting around facing the challenge square in the face, the world stopping certainly put my transition center stage with no worldly comfort available to disguise it. 

I began to write. I wrote about my experiences, things I think about, challenges I observe, and anything that seemed to strike a chord with my inside-out exploration. By April 1st, I decided to launch my blog and put my content out there. My common thread was my authentic experience. I figured if it was honest and happening in my life, at least I knew it was true and perhaps someone else may be asking the same questions, thinking the same deep thoughts, or going through a similar experience. If I wasn’t going to serve in an office I could serve through the keyboard, and it may be all I have to give in this transition from one chapter to the next. 

CHAPTERING

Perhaps it’s because I am pregnant with my third child, I’m turning 38 this year, or I’ve made it a priority to share my life with others, but I can’t help my passion to encourage a deep place of honest reflection and introspection that can open questions to lead to a more fulfilled external life. As I dove into writing this article, it became clear to me that all of those reasons make perfect sense considering the chapter of life that I am currently in. 

An exercise that has opened my introspective eyes in a new way has been to “chapter” my life into a timeline. It could also be called life-mapping. This means to proactively look at your life through the lens of stages. Stages can be five years, seven years, or a decade; whatever time frame that seems to define shifts and changes in your life over the years. I do believe there is something behind the seven-year mark for change and growth, and I can see that tendency in my own life. I see more transitions somewhere near the seven-year mark than simplifying it to decades. 

Life Map

A life map is a visual timeline. It traces key moments in your life from the time you were born until the present day. .

I believe this exercise is one that takes a seeking heart, an inner maturity to accurately reflect and be honest with yourself, and an ability to process healthily and use the learnings to move forward. In analyzing the chapters of your life, you can bring meaning as you look back, perspective as you look forward, and clarity for decisions you make today. 

LIFE TIMELINE EXERCISE

Try this mapping exercise to reflect on your life timeline up until this point. Also, consider future chapters and see the potential for the runway ahead. 

• Measure out your life to date in major chapters. I used 7-year periods. What were the highlights, accomplishments and learnings of each of your past 7-year periods?

  • Identify three to five important events of experience during each time segment. Consider positive and negative experiences, life-transforming decisions you've made, or when you first met influential people in your life.

  • Take time for personal reflection. As you note the experiences that have made up your life, you can add notes about how an event made you feel or reflections about how certain decision or experiences affected the later course of your life. Don't expect to finish your timeline all in one go. The process of creating a personal timeline takes time and consideration, and with careful reflection, you might find yourself wanting to include other experiences.

• How many 7-year periods do you have before you hit 100?

• Draw a timeline from 0 to 100 and place yourself on it. This gives you an idea of the possible length of the runway ahead.

  • Consult your timeline to plan future goals. A timeline is an excellent tool for seeing how the events of your life have shaped the present. It can also point out places in your life where you wished you had acted differently or hoped for a different outcome. 

Here is a very brief version of my life map to date just to give overarching categories of the seven-year cycles I observed. The detailed version would be a deep dive into things that don’t serve this article, although I am happy to share or discuss with anyone to serve their own mapping.

You can do this with a pen and paper. If you’re looking for a digital tool to use, here is one that works well for a more graphic, interactive and visual experience. Whatever you do, just don’t make the actual mapping more complicated than necessary. The result is the map to make you reflect, so please don’t complicate the process. 

TIMELINE REFLECTIONS

“Maybe the journey isn’t so much about becoming anything. Maybe it’s about unbecoming everything that isn’t really you, so you can be who you were meant to be in the first place.”

I’ve shared this quote before, and I have it on my “about” page on my website. It spoke to me as I navigated my early and mid-thirties. I have felt that my thirties have been the decade of unbecoming everything I spent my twenties becoming. Although, I have recently realized that I don’t fully agree with the full quote. 

The word “unbecome” connotates that what I was was wrong or not on the right path or something that shouldn’t have been. The truth is, every decade or seven-year cycle has been 100% necessary to get to where I am today. I was never inauthentic to who I was at the time. 

To expect to be “who you were meant to be in the first place” nearly suggests that we have been designed to be one identity our whole life. I am quite confident that 42-year-old me will be different and hopefully have more wisdom than 35-year-old me, and 49-year-old me will be different and have more wisdom than 42-year-old me. In embracing an inside-out wellbeing journey, I feel we need to let go of the idea that there is a destination or a “ME” that needs to be found and instead live in the fullness and purpose that has been designed for today.

Embrace chapters and embrace transitions! Change and grow!

Life mapping also brings to mind the dandelion time-lapse. I felt my twenties were represented by the yellow flower that could be perceived as “attractive" but not nourishing to myself or anyone around me. It was a self-driven, outside-in approach to life. My thirties resemble the period when the flower closes back up to prepare for its second bloom as seeds. It looks as though the flower is dying, but it is actually preparing to give more life.

As I creep toward 40, I feel like I am entering a new chapter that lends my life to be seeds for others. I have nothing to live for beyond what I can give to others. This realization has been foundational to why I began this blog and opening my life to whatever comes. 

No longer am I looking to make the outside look how I want the inside to feel. As a 37-year-old woman, I am focused on the inside work and I believe deeply that the outside results will follow.

The purity that God demands is impossible unless I can be remade within, and that is exactly what Jesus has undertaken to do through His redemption.

Oswald Chambers

FUTURE CHAPTERS

If the timeline of our lives is a journey, and the moment is what we’re supposed to focus on living to its fullest, where does that leave our vision, our goals, our dreams, our hopes, and our desires? How are we supposed to chart out potential future chapters if it’s all about HERE and NOW? 

This strain of questions sums up a lot of what I contemplated as I entered 2020. I spent years laser focused on a destination that I thought would transform the world, and then I realized it had become an idol. It had grown so massive that it eclipsed the very purpose of my journey. The vision of a destination dominated the true aim and importance of living in the moment on a faith walk anchored to a love for God and the people He has surrounded me with every moment of every day. Sacrifice for work became my god (lower case g) and the fruit of that sacrifice was a shell of a physical, mental, emotional and spiritual presence who wasn’t able to give love to anyone else. 

“I don’t want your sacrifices—I want your love; I don’t want your offerings—I want you to know me.

Hosea 6:6

THE AUTHOR OF MY STORY

My solution in looking toward future chapters is that today always carries tomorrow. I have no business worrying about what may be. I anchor my aspirations, my desires, and my goals to my faith that my steps are guided. This connects back to the Inside-Out System where our value systems are the foundation for our intentions, attention, connections and actions. Do you see how being anchored to something will transform your life? 

My lens for my future is different. I don’t seek much beyond what I know I can give now, and I will give that fully. I’m not trying to fill a future cup. Whatever my cup should be as a turn 40, 50, 60, or 70 (should I be blessed to live that long) it will be because I am living now with a thirst to be emptied out, to give my best, to love with everything that I have, and to grow in every way possible. My eyes are not set on tomorrow, they’re set on God and His tremendous love for me and every other human. That’s mission enough to fill millions of lifetimes, and I pray I will do my part in this one. 

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