Changing For The Better

CORE PRACTICE #52: Be sensitive and considerate to your spouse during transitions.

So now I am giving you a new commandment: Love each other. Just as I have loved you, you should love each other. Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples. —John 13:34-35

Lauren

Change. It’s not for the squeamish.

Most people—me included—don’t look forward to having to go through it. Tony is a strong, adaptable, optimistic person, but transitions are hard for him too. Change is difficult because we are moving from the certain to the uncertain, wanting to believe it will be for good but not really knowing what the next season will bring.

Tony’s chosen career path resulted in a lot of change for us and our children. Tony admitted it was always a little easier for him to adapt than it was for us, and I suspect he’s right. Because he recognized the adjustments we had to make, I’m grateful that he did all he could to help us get acclimated as quickly as possible in our new surroundings.

For example, when he left the Kansas City Chiefs to take a promotion and become defensive coordinator with the Minnesota Vikings, we all faced big changes. But Tony’s new job thrust him back into a familiar setting: The faces of many of the fifty-three players and fifteen coaches may have been new to him, but he already had a relationship with his boss, Denny Green, as well as several of the other staff members. In addition, he had long workdays doing what he loved to keep him busy. The children and I, on the other hand, had left a neighborhood we’d grown to love in Kansas City, not to mention our friends at church and within the Chiefs’ organization.

As is the case with most moves, building relationships and finding friends took some time—especially since we arrived in Minnesota in the off-season. As excited as Tony was to be back in the city where he’d been a football standout in college, he realized that this wasn’t an easy transition for the rest of us. Particularly during that first winter when our home was surrounded by snowdrifts, Tony tried to make things better. He introduced me to other coaches’ wives. We looked together for a church where we could develop new friendships. He agreed to go on an end-of-school camping trip with two other families the kids and I had gotten to know through their elementary school.

The bottom line for Tony was this: Even though he and his career had been the impetus for this change, he needed to focus on us and our needs. We were the ones adrift.

Tony did. And we got through it.

And, yes, the snow eventually melted.

Adventure Application: Are you currently going through a period of change, or are you looking ahead to a transition in the future? Talk to each other about it. Plan what you can do to help each other and your children with any change.