Looking Beyond the Stress: Finding Growth in Life’s Changes - Part 2

Change is inevitable, but growth is optional.

In my last post, I set out to share the Transformation Model that has evolved for me over the span of my life coaching career. But I decided to share a personal illustration of the stages of the change process before I gave you the framework.

Part 1 left you with my description of the peculiar discomfort of liminal space - the in-between - where you are no longer who you were, but you cannot yet articulate who you are becoming. It requires staying present without rushing toward resolution. And that, for someone wired like me, felt like its own form of discipline.

And so, the surrender came. The softening happened. The receptivity started to form. All of this while my body still punished me for the lack of easy oxygen.

...Let’s pick up the story from there...[Click here if you want to read Part 1 in its entirety.]

Gradually, clarity began to surface—not about my circumstances, but about my values. I began to see that strength did not mean override. Faith did not mean force. Resilience was not synonymous with relentless striving. My body was not my enemy; it was my messenger. I found myself reaching for a concept I knew in my head, but now needed to live as a daily truth: God was less interested in relocating me than in reshaping me.

What began to reorganize inside of me was a quieter conviction: I could choose alignment over achievement. I could honor limits instead of denying them. I could measure success not by altitude conquered, but by integrity between my inner reality and outer life.

I began to make some adjustments - outward signs of an inward shift - that I never would have considered before running out of my well-worn performance-based strategies for managing outcomes.

For instance, I begged off when my biking buddies asked me to do a ride that was all climb - with the initial trailhead above 7,000 feet, and only up from there! I pulled back on my workload, as well as creating more white space in our social calendar. I did more of the outdoor adventures solo, or just with my husband, so I could regulate the anaerobic cardio impact better. So, my circumstances stayed, but my response to them changed.

Hm...doesn’t sound unlike how God works sometimes. He’s hearing our prayers, and answering them; just not the way we had in mind...(See Isaiah 55:8-9)

Over time, those outward adjustments became less about accommodation and more about identity. Saying no to certain outdoor challenges no longer felt like failure; it felt like wisdom. Pulling back from social expectations no longer felt like withdrawal; it felt like stewardship. The white space I once resisted became sacred space.

The mountains I lived in had not moved.  But something inside of me had. And that shift—not the change in circumstance—became the true transformation.

Although the altitude still challenged my physiology,  it no longer defined my worth. Now when the ingrained performance patterns surfaced, they no longer felt like my de facto mode. Something new challenged those old grooves. A different rhythm was taking root.

It took getting to the other side of this decade-plus narrative to realize I was walking through the same pattern of transitions to transformation I had been observing in my clients’ journeys over the many years of my coaching career. How I had been accompanying them through the uncertainties and lack of closure and understanding - all that comes with the change process - I was experiencing in and for myself.

I believe that’s what they call having to drink your own Kool-Aid?

My husband’s retirement signaled the end of my intractable dilemma - after almost twenty years of living in a contraindicated environment for my body, we traded the thin air of the mountains for oxygen-saturated, sea-level air. It didn’t take my systems long to absorb the change - my energy shot up to what my husband calls “intimidating." Now that's a problem we are both thankful to take on.

I would not go so far as to say I am glad for the grueling, soul-searing trial of those years; but what I carry forward is much broader and deeper than just an up close and personal understanding of how living at altitude can affect the body systems.  What I did not realize at the time was that this physical relocation marked the beginning of the embody stage relative to this particular awareness journey of an old way of moving in the world that wasn’t a part of who am I becoming - closer to my true self.

The journey through transitions to transformation is not neat or time-boxed. The stages can twist, overlap, and sometimes circle back on themselves. But the points on the path are recognizable. Looking back now, I can trace the movement along the line of an arrow, from left to right, that illustrated my story:

The stirring of discomfort, the unraveling of old identities, the long stretch of liminal uncertainty, the slow reorientation of values, and finally, a more authentic way of living.

Let me now translate my personal journey into the model that I believe depicts our common quest for transformative growth through the inevitable changes and challenges we face in life.

Think of this set of stages, placed along an arrow, not as a rigid rule, but a guide—an invitation to notice where you are, to lean into growth, and to trust that transformation will unfold as you intentionally move through the transitions.

As you reflect on your own path, consider where you are on the arrow. Are you just noticing an old way of moving in the world is not working anymore for you?

Maybe you are ready to name that pattern, and then consider releasing it for movement towards something more authentic to who you are becoming?

Or does “no turning back” resonate with where you are - in liminal space, between the old and new behaviors?

Or maybe you most identify with the embodied stage - where a new behavior has become a new habit and feels more natural.

Rest assured, if you remain receptive, another awareness will come along to challenge your internal status quo, and you will find yourself back on the left side of the arrow - but more practiced as to what is to come in the ongoing journey towards integration and wholeness.

Another way to capture the essence of this recognizable pattern:

Where are you along this path today, and what small step could you take to move toward the next stage of growth?

**My offer of support: If you contact me via ‘chat w/ me’ on Perils & Pearls, I will gift you a thirty-minute coaching session to talk about where you are on this arrow, and where the opportunties for growth can be found in the in-betweens.

**And if you have been stirred to further explore your unique wiring – strengths, passions, challenges - & you would like to experience a strength assessment with a certified life coach, I invite you to contact me.

If you would like to follow me on this adventure, and receive notice whenever I post something new, please subscribe. (It’s simple – at the top and bottom of every page on the Perils & Pearls blog site. *No need to be a 'member.')

**A word about POSTING COMMENTS: I LV engaging with your feedback/responses to my writings! But, if you run into tech obstacles when trying to post a comment, please feel free to do as so many of you have done: Send me a private message using the "Let's Chat" option on the Perils & Pearls Home Page.

And if you know people who would benefit from the support, and/or enjoy the short writings, please share the site or a post with them. Heck, just share it on your social media…Let’s grow it together! 

Blessed to play a part ~

g

Looking Beyond the Stress: Finding Growth in Life’s Changes- Part 1

Change is inevitable, but growth is optional.

We are all familiar with the aphorism: The only constant in life is change. And it is a true-ism that change is inevitable, but growth is optional.  Or said differently: No growth without change. But how we navigate the transitions inherent to the change process will determine whether the result is lasting transformation.

Transition is the inner process of letting go of the old reality and integrating a new identity; and transformation is the personal growth that emerges from that process of releasing and realigning.

Through my work as a life coach, as well as in my own lived experience, I have observed a repeatable pattern of the stages we go through between a shift in the status quo (whether self-initiated or not), and the settling-in at a new place with new, practiced responses, perspectives, and ways of being.

My desire is to share the model that has evolved over many years of life coaching, so as to add to your toolbox for successfully navigating the requisite transitions that come with life’s inevitable changes.

But before I share the dynamic model of the transitions inside of transformation, let me invite you into a personal reflection on an extended season of transitions that over time—though not neatly or painlessly—became transformative for me.

The stage was set: We moved from Ohio, where we had been born, raised, and married, to our dreamland - Durango, Colorado. It was a perfect match for so many of our passions - fly-fishing, mountain biking, Nordic skiing, camping...the list goes on. But a crucial statistic that we unknowingly underestimated became my undoing. Durango is a mountain town that comes with an altitude that will test anyone’s oxygen uptake and delivery systems.

Turns out that for this body, living at 7400 feet was comparable to being high-risk for skin cancer and living in Florida.

What began as some seemingly unrelated bouts of horrific headaches, shoulder and neck pain, nausea, vision and sleep issues, and overall feeling of malaise turned into over a decade of tests and specialists to finally land at the crushing truth: I was dealing with Chronic Mountain Sickness (CMS).  (For my purpose here, I will stay out of the brutally complex journey of diagnosis with all of the accompanying clinical terminology.)

You are probably familiar with the concept of altitude (or climbers’) sickness - where you have these initial symptoms as the body tries to adjust to the drastic cardiopulmonary changes that come with the thin mountain air. Normally, the body acclimates in a few days, and you go back to feeling well. That never happened for me. My body was unable to make the necessary adjustments to alleviate the symptoms that slowly but surely was eating away at my quality of life.

As an Enneagram Type 3, (with the false sense of self => set goals + achieve + perform = be loved), I just kept upping the workout intensity/frequency button and waited for my body to buck up. I lived in ‘press mode’. And no one but my husband saw the true cost - and even he wasn’t awake to observe when I was up all night because of level-nine pain, crying out to God for some relief, some answers, some hope.

I’ll never forget a statement one of my dear friends made when she was asking probing questions about my condition and the picture of my suffering was becoming clearer to her.

You are the healthiest sick person I have ever known!

The sober truth in her exclamation unfolded very slowly for this self-reliant, over-functioning Type 3, so practiced at doing that she barely noticed how deeply she was hurting.  You see, I was still performing in the various quadrants of my life - still running our household while life coaching, entertaining clients and guests, and participating in all of the outdoor activities that had brought us to Colorado. I wasn’t ready to acknowledge my limitations, even to myself, let alone my husband or friends. Just try harder! Buck up! Be positive!

Meanwhile, my prayers were all about being rescued - first from the symptoms. When that didn’t happen in the first ten years of living there, my supplication moved to being rescued from the place of my pain. But as it would happen, all of my husband’s attempts to get a job at a lower altitude ended in closed doors. I had to accept I was staying in this place that made me sick.

It was during this excruciating time of walking out my sentence of living in this paradoxical place, where my paradise had become my prison, that I finally came to the end of myself. I hit the wall, I came unraveled, I was completely flattened. Laid out on the floor next to our bed, I soaked the carpet with my tears and wailed my surrender to the heavens.

Finally, I was ready to turn my focus to what needed to change inside of me - no matter the location of my residence.

What followed was not immediate clarity. It was disorientation. I had surrendered—but I did not yet know who I was becoming. The old self that prided herself on endurance and output was clearly unsustainable, yet the new self had not taken shape. I felt suspended between identities: no longer able to force my body into compliance, but unsure how to live without the engine of performance driving me.

The altitude had not changed. My diagnosis had not changed. My prayers for relocation had not been answered the way I hoped. And so I sat in the in-between—where nothing external shifted, yet something internal was quietly loosening.

There is a peculiar discomfort in that space - liminal space. You are no longer who you were, but you cannot yet articulate who you are becoming. It requires staying present without rushing toward resolution. And that, for someone wired like me, felt like its own form of discipline.

And so, the surrender had come. The softening happened. The receptivity started to form. All of this while my body still punished me for the lack of easy oxygen.

Cliff-hanger alert! ...Stay tuned... In Part 2 next week, I’ll share the rest of this personal story and the Transformation Model, hopefully to encourage and equip you wherever you are on your arrow.

If you would like to follow me on this adventure, and receive notice whenever I post something new, please subscribe. (It’s simple – at the top and bottom of every page on the Perils & Pearls blog site. *No need to be a 'member.')

**A word about POSTING COMMENTS: I LV engaging with your feedback/responses to my writings! But, if you run into tech obstacles when trying to post a comment, please feel free to do as so many of you have done: Send me a private message using the "Let's Chat" option on the Perils & Pearls Home Page.

And if you know people who would benefit from the support, and/or enjoy the short writings, please share the site or a post with them. Heck, just share it on your social media…Let’s grow it together! 

Blessed to play a part ~

g

The Invasion From Glory

In these days before the celebration of Christ’s birth, I wanted to share a gift with you. I have recently found myself drawn to the writings of a minister and author whose unassuming humility and graciousness belie the depth of his scholarship and insight. Michael Sprague’s LinkedIn posts are consistently thoughtful, edifying and bring a new perspective to a scripture or topic that may not be new, or possibly even so familiar as to seem cliché in meaning.

Here, with his permission, I am sharing a recent writing he posted about the timing of the “Invasion from Glory” relative the that particular local culture and what was going on in the world at large in that time. I came away not only enlightened by some historical facts, but also enlarged in my view of God, and reminded of how His timing is layered with meaning and purposes far beyond what we see, correlate or comprehend.

Have a read and be blessed. And may your Christmas be filled with His love, peace and joy.

PREPARING THE NURSERY: There is a lot to love about the Christmas season: lights, trees, family, faith and music. I just saw the list of the 100 top Christmas songs. "Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire" was #8. "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer" was in the top 20. Sorry grandmas! Can you guess the #1 Christmas song?

Silent Night! which was written in 1818. Between the end of the Old Testament and beginning of the New Testament there were many Silent Nights. 400 years’ worth. No prophets. No new messages. Silence. In most of our Bibles there is one blank page between Malachi and Matthew. It is referred to as the intertestamental period or the 400 years of silence.

Maybe you have been going through dark times and Silent Nights. It is during these times when God is SILENT we must remember He is not STILL, and we lean into his SOVEREIGNTY. Oh how God was busy during those 400 silent years rearranging the world stage for the arrival of Jesus.

I was reading Galatians 4:4a today and was blown away, “But when the fullness of time was come, God sent forth His son.” God readied the nursery in Bethlehem for a baby to rescue people from their sins. The dots all connected with a convergence of circumstances that would rock the world and quickly spread the Good News.

Here are five keys on how the world was prepared for the Invasion from Glory:

1. COMMON LANGUAGE - Koine, the common Greek Language permeated the empire so people, both great and common, could easily communicate.

2. ROADS - 55,000 miles of roads were paved to create pathways for commerce and communication, including the gospel.

3. PAX ROMANO - The Peace of Rome provided a time of relative quiet peace in human history.

4. SYNAGOGUES - The emergence of the synagogue system of local worship centers throughout the empire provided a built-in launchpad for Jesus, Paul, and others to announce the Good News. 

5. INTERNATIONAL HIGHWAY - The number one rule of real estate is Location, Location, Location. God positioned Israel as the Landbridge to three continents: Africa, Asia, and Europe. Commerce, trade, and travel in the ancient world went right through Israel and in particular the headquarters of Jesus in Capernaum. The nations could make money and hear about the Living God.

Only God! What timing. The stage was set. The fullness of time had come. The world would never be the same. Outwardly, it would have looked like the Roman Empire had the same problems and wickedness that characterizes our day, but the Father was working. He is equally at work in our times and in your life and mine. How might He use the internet? Times of Turmoil? Your job? The ability to travel? International students coming to our campuses?

Remember - when God seems SILENT, He is not STILL and we need to lean into his SOVEREIGNTY.

To consider...

 Where in your life are you experiencing “silent nights,” and how might God be actively at work behind the scenes even when you cannot see or hear Him?

  What circumstances, resources, or relationships in your current season might be part of God “preparing the nursery” for something you do not yet fully understand?

  When God feels silent, what does it look like for you to lean into His sovereignty rather than trying to regain control through your own efforts?

**My offers of support: If you contact me via ‘chat w/ me’ on Perils & Pearls, I will gift you a thirty-minute coaching session to talk about how you might develop your resilience through the struggle(s) you are currently facing.

**And if you have been stirred to further explore your unique wiring – strengths, passions, challenges - & you would like to experience a strength assessment with a certified life coach, I invite you to contact me.

If you would like to follow me on this adventure, and receive notice whenever I post something new, please subscribe. (It’s simple – at the top and bottom of every page on the Perils & Pearls blog site. *No need to be a 'member.')

**A word about POSTING COMMENTS: I LV engaging with your feedback/responses to my writings! But, if you run into tech obstacles when trying to post a comment, please feel free to do as so many of you have done: Send me a private message using the "Let's Chat" option on the Perils & Pearls Home Page.

And if you know people who would benefit from the support, and/or enjoy the short writings, please share the site or a post with them. Heck, just share it on your social media…Let’s grow it together! 

Blessed to play a part ~

g