Years ago we remember a man who used to pray, "Lord suit out our changes." We were never quite sure of what he meant. He probably was praying about the uncomfortable changes that creep into our lives. The best I can figure out "suit out our changes" involved making change suitable. Perhaps he was asking the Lord to help us learn how to live with change.

Some of the changes that take place in our lives are beyond our control. People have a tendency to react to those changes in a predictable manner. In this week's feature article, we attempt to identify some of the dynamics of those changes we didn't want.

As we looked over our copy for the newsletter, we realized that we didn't have too many positive things to say. While it may be necessary to identify the dynamics of involuntary transition, we didn't really say anything about coping with it in this week's issue. So we decided to publish the poem, "When Things Go Wrong." It's in the opposite direction and offers us hope for our discouraging moments.

Norman and Ann

In our previous installment, we considered some of the stress factors associated with all the major transitions in our lives, both voluntary and involuntary. These were:

• a sense of loss.
  
• a loss of credibility.
  
• a loss of a sense of self-worth.
  
• the learning curve.

• Denial of closure. We know people who have received a termination notice from company management late in the afternoon. They were given only an hour or two to clean out their desks. A company employee was assigned to watch the process. Of course they felt like their integrity was being challenged. Worse yet, their relationship with fellow employees was severed without an opportunity to say "good bye." They feel an enormous sense of loss. The same thing can happen when a spouse abruptly walks out of the home or a child runs away from parents.

• Shock and denial. When a relationship termination occurs without warning, people who weren't aware that it was going to happen often resist accepting the truth. They may pretend that it's all a very bad dream from which they will later awaken.

• Defensiveness. Listen to the conversation of people whose marriages have been terminated. Most of the time they talk about the ways their spouses behaved irresponsibly. If they talk about their own behavior in the relationship, they make it appear that they "did everything they could" to resolve the conflict.

• Carry-over. There's a tendency to carry hostility, unresolved anger and perceptions of blame into the next relationship and dump it on the unsuspecting person who enters into a new relationship with you.

• Unrealistic expectations. You may go into your next relationship, marriage, job or whatever with the same communication patterns, roles and expectations that you had before. It may never occur to you that you need to look inward and analyze the things you did to make the relationship fall apart.

• Unwillingness to trust. When you've been hurt, you don't want to experience that same hurt again. Success in relationship building always involves an element of risk, but you may be reluctant to run the risk of trusting again.

• Projection. Let's suppose your termination is beyond your control. You can't talk back to the people who did it. In a job situation, the decision may have been made on a computer half way around the world. You're so frustrated, you think you've got to pour out your anger to someone. Family members, friends, even fellow Christians often become the scapegoats.

A criminal uses a knife as a weapon of death, but a surgeon uses a scalpel as an instrument of healing. James Bailey, a friend who has recently moved to our area, connects the two different actions to the grace that has been offered to us by God. Be sure to read his thoughts.