July was a month of transition. I’m glad August is here. It feels somehow like a new beginning, like the transition is turning now into normalcy.

Then again, I’m always trying to find a way out of necessary transition. I tend to value the destination over the journey. I want to have arrived. And I want to have arrived yesterday.

But if I’m honest with myself, and if I’m honest with you, I have to admit that this is probably just the beginning of a long season of transition: for myself and for NNPCW. Such a season of transition is inevitable, given the fact that I’m new to the network, that NNPCW will be getting a new intern at the end of this month, that a class of young women has graduated, and that a new class awaits at the threshold.

While transition doesn’t come naturally to me, however, I am learning to live with it (this year seems to be characterized by one transition after another!), and I’m even learning to appreciate it. I’ve felt this appreciation most strongly over the last few months, ever since I learned I was pregnant with my first child. The news came as a bit of a surprise, and I’ve actually appreciated the fact that I have a nine-month-long journey to arrive at this destination. Transition can give us the time we need to get used to change in our lives. It can be grace hidden in chaos.

So while I don’t naturally like to journey without knowing when I will “arrive,” a strange and calming peace has characterized my current transition into the position of Associate for NNPCW. I feel the stirrings of God’s Spirit among you, and I look ahead at our journey together with anticipation and excitement. Sure, I’m still excited to learn just where it is we’re going, and I’m sure once we figure that out it’s going to be tempting to take my eyes off the journey and fix them on the destination, but for now I’m okay with the unknowing. I’m okay with the transition, the easing in, the growing.

My prayer is that we will journey through this transition together with grace, patience, faithfulness and determination. I have no doubt that the journey will be difficult at times, but I have every confidence that it will be well worth it.

Let’s journey together.

Noelle

“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” –Hebrews 11:1

“I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work in you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ.” --Philippians 1:6