Life’s Changes:  Keys to Learning and Growth

By Mike Bundrant with Reverend Carrie Masters

Every once in a while a change comes along that knocks us off our feet.  Some examples of this kind of change are divorce, death of a loved one, loss of job, separation from a child, or a move to a new location.  These kinds of sweeping changes seem to be in a category of their own and contain special challenges and opportunities.  The pain and loss often associated with these seems only to be matched by the opportunity they present for personal learning and growth.

Having experienced several of these changes myself in the last two years, I’ve been seeking opportunity to learn from friends and local experts on how to weather these transitions in the healthiest manner possible.  I was able to sit down with Reverend Carrie Masters of the Church of Religious Science to find out what else I might learn.  Everything that follows here is a summary of what I took from our discussion.

Ernest Holmes, founder of The Church of Religious Science…who wrote The Science of Mind, was fond of the saying “the only constant thing is change”.  He also said, “Nature will not let us stay in anyone place too long. She will let us stay just long enough to gather the experience necessary to the unfolding and advancement of the soul.” 

According to Reverend Carrie, when life’s inevitable changes occur, it is important to keep moving.  Like a pond or lake that has no outlet and it is stagnant (often with a foul odor) we become stagnant if we allow life’s inevitable transitions to keep us from learning and growing. We can learn from our experience by paying close attention to our deepest thoughts and feelings about what we are going through and acting on what we feel is right.

Reverend Carrie counseled further that while we need to keep moving, it is also important to keep from moving too quickly.  When we lose a loved one through separation in any degree, we often want to make ourselves busy or keep ourselves distracted in an attempt to “patch the wound” through other people and activities.  While this can be useful to do at times, it is also important to  “just be”…to allow ourselves to experience our pain without band-aiding the wound.  This ultimately facilitates the process of letting go and moving on.

In time, we allow ourselves to ask, “What’s next?” and do so slowly and thoughtfully.  I commented that it’s tough to take the time to really figure out what’s next…what we really want.  We often feel a sense of urgency to get through the change and take whichever new opportunity that presents itself. Reverend Carrie agreed it is tough to go slowly, and very important to do so just the same. 

She said, “After planting a seed in the ground you don’t want to dig it up to see if it is growing.  You can’t hold on to the seed and allow it to fulfill its potential.  You must let it be in order for it to grow. This requires faith and patience.  Nature dictates that the seed will grow.  We must trust in that.”

Reverend Carrie’s final advice was that once we move through a change and find ourselves in a new situation, we can celebrate how far we’ve come.  We bless the entire process - whether or not we are where we planned on being.