How you go into a situation, deal with it while you are in it and how you handle it when it is over, will greatly affect your life. Our lives are full of transitions. Relationships ebb and flow. People come and go out of our lives. We have conflicts, hardships, and difficulties. The question is how will we handle them?

What you exit one season with, you will enter the next one with. How you end one will be how you enter the next one. It is so important that healing take place. If you transition from one relationship into another without getting healing or some resolve, you will take all the hurt from that relationship into the next one.

God has to deal with what hurt you in the last season or your next season will include that hurt and it will surface. It doesn’t just go away.

What is my response when things happen?

Paul and Silas chose to praise. Even in the midst of false accusations, beatings, and wrongly imprisonment, they made the choice to praise God.

It seems to me that often we just look to God for more strength to carry our burdens and our pain rather than seeking to be set free from it or healed completely. We often look for more faith to carry things that we have been told to lay down to repent of or to let go of. God doesn’t want to strengthen you to carry burdens, He wants to help you get free from them!

As you transition from one season of life to another, it is very important how you respond to the people who have wounded you, spoken against you or in some way have caused you grief.

People are watching to see how you navigate hard times.

How you handle the hard transitions in life will affect other people. The disciples' praise in this situation set other people free. How you handle the hard times of life speaks volumes about what you truly believe.

Let’s face it, transitions are a fancy way of saying change, and not all of us handle change well. Even those of us who love it, sometimes love it because we get to leave things behind us. But if what is left behind you is a pile of bodies of hurt and broken people then you are just escaping reality and not dealing with issues. Stuff will follow you if you don’t deal with it!

Transitions in any area of our lives can cause stress. We must deal with this stress, maybe seeing it as a challenge, and do our work to transition well. You cannot simply ignore the stress of transitions. Your body will not let you. Your soul will not let you. It will surface.

We must learn to end things well. So many people just burn their bridges and move on seeming not to care about relationships or others that they have hurt. We can do better. But it takes work.

What you leave one marriage with will follow you into the next one. The same thing with relationships, jobs, churches, etc, and the list goes on and on. You have to learn to end things well.

How you enter relationships and how you end them both speak highly of your character.

Are you willing to be honest about where you are in learning to transition relationships and seasons in your life?