I was with some friends, Chris and Cindy Beall, in Oklahoma last week for about 5 hours.  I got up in the morning, got on the plane, landed, rented the car, drove to their place, hung out, got back in the car, got back on the plane, landed, drove home.  Whew! It was a really cool day and they have an amazing story.  I was meeting with them to see if there is some potential to turn their story into a book or some sort of resource for others that are going through what they have survived.  I think it has real promise!

Anyhow, during our conversations we hit on a theme that has stuck with me for these last days.  They talked about the change in their relationship that produced a “new kind of normal.”  This family went through a significant crisis—for more detail check out http://cindybeall.com.   In the days after, Cindy’s refrain was, “I just want our old life back!” But over time that changed.  As things progressed she started coming to a real appreciation of the new way their life was shaping up.  Now she will tell you that the new normal is far better than anything she had in her pre-crisis days.

This concept really hit me.  The new normal.  I think my first reaction was that in some ways, the new normal must be inferior to the old normal.  Not sure why my thinking goes there, but it does.  Maybe that’s because culturally we tend to romanticize the past?  Who knows.  But after talking to Chris and Cindy I started to think about the couple of times in my life when “normal” has been reset, when everything changes.  And you know what, even though the transition can be tough, the new normal really turns out to be a blessing.

Some new normals are all good.  When we had Audrey and then Emma that was a new normal—wouldn’t change that for anything.  But a couple transitions were harder.  When I was the subject of an intervention because of my alcoholism, that was the beginning of a new normal.  When I got diagnoses with bi-polar, that was the beginning of a new normal.  Those were tougher, and the new normal took a while to take hold. The immediate aftermath of both situations was messy and ugly and jarring. But as time went by, things got better.  I went to AA and got serious about sobriety.  I got the medication that I needed.

Now I can look around at where we are today as a family and appreciate, and even thank God , for the new normal.  That doesn’t mean that everything is sunshine and roses all the time—far from it!  But it does mean that on the whole, things in this current reality are by far better than they have been before.  There is literally no time in my life that I can look back on and lament that things aren’t as good today as they were “back then.”

I take this as a sign of God’s grace. I have to believe that it’s because of God’s love for us that he allows the tough transitions, the crises, the jarring shifts in out day-to-day lives to produce a better and brighter new normal.  Isn’t that just like our God?  So thanks Chris and Cindy for helping me to see the beauty of the new normal.

Filed under: COMMUNITY, HOPE, THOUGHTS by toben