If you’ve wandered along a rushing creek in the Spring, when Winter is leaving and the creek is swollen with the warming snowmelt, you’ll likely note that the edges of the creek are turbulently chaotic. There are likely some defined edges where the water rushes up against something firm and hard, but along the softer creekbanks the edges become carved by the water.

Change and transition are often turbulently chaotic. While we may enter into a season of change with great intention and deliberation, at a certain point that change is going to be channeled and defined by circumstances beyond our control. Areas that are deeply limited and seemingly force us into choice’s we’d rather avoid but are forced to accept.

That can then place us in conditions where we are forced to make choices faster than we wish. The roughness of those choices, even where we might have more ability to choose, can create deep and ragged edges – rough edges – that we will be forced to accept.

Rough edges that we will then have to live with and integrate going forward. Time will likely gently chisel down the starkness of those edges – both the ones we made in haste and the instances where there was no choice but to accept what was thrust upon us. Deep canyons exist yet are not the most common landscape. With time, rough mountain ranges are worn down and become foothills – eventually.

Living with rough edges hurts. It’s a pain that may not be worn down within your life time. As a parent of a child that died at age 22, there are rough edges.

Rough edges can force change. It can be a way to cope, integrate and live with something that many consider impossible. My rough edges have lead to change. I’m still exploring and learning.