The Shifting Sands of Change

Standing Between Chapters

This morning I am sitting quietly with my first coffee of the day.

The house is still.

The world feels slower.

And for the first time in a long time, I honestly do not know what comes next.

Yesterday my time at Bible college came to an end unexpectedly.

Even writing that sentence feels strange.

A part of me still does not fully believe it.

A part of me keeps replaying the conversations in my head trying to make sense of them.

Trying to understand what happened.

Trying to understand why.

Trying to understand what God is doing.

And if I am completely honest this morning, I do not have answers.

I wish I did.

I wish this was one of those blog posts where I could neatly tie everything together with a bow and tell you exactly what lesson God is teaching me.

I wish I could tell you I am full of peace.

I wish I could tell you I understand the purpose.

I wish I could tell you I saw it coming.

I cannot.

The truth is I am angry.

I am disappointed.

I am confused and have no answers.

And I am carrying a grief I did not expect to be carrying this week.

The strange thing is that life rarely asks permission before it changes.

One day you are planning for a future you think is unfolding in a certain direction.

The next day you are standing in the middle of a completely different landscape wondering how you got there.

We move with the ever shifting sands of change.

That is where I find myself this morning.

Standing in the middle.

Not where I was.

Not yet where I am going.

Just somewhere in between.

And I think that is one of the hardest places a human being can stand.

The middle.

The place where the old chapter has ended but the new chapter has not fully begun.

The place where you cannot go backward but you also cannot clearly see forward.

The place where questions outnumber answers.

The place where faith gets tested.

Not the faith that exists when everything makes sense.

The faith that exists when nothing does.

What makes this even stranger is that this week also marks my first month working for Queensland Health.

One month.

Thirty days.

Thirty days ago I was stepping into something completely new.

Walking into Gold Coast University Hospital.

Learning a new environment.

Meeting new people.

Trying to find my feet.

Trying to work out where I fit.

Trying to learn an entirely different rhythm of life.

And honestly, I have enjoyed it far more than I expected.

I have met good people.

I have learned new skills.

I have seen parts of humanity that remind me how fragile life really is.

Hospitals have a way of doing that.

You quickly realise how much suffering exists.

How quickly life can change.

How one phone call can alter everything.

How one diagnosis can turn someone's world upside down.

How temporary so much of life really is.

Working in that environment has already taught me things.

It has humbled me.

It has reminded me that every person walking past you is carrying something.

A burden.

A fear.

A grief.

A story and seasons they rarely speak about.

And maybe that is partly why this season feels so strange.

Because while one door closed yesterday, another door has already been opening for weeks.

I just did not realise how quickly the transition would happen.

I thought there would be overlap.

I thought there would be clarity.

I thought there would be time.

Instead it feels like someone turned the page while I was still reading the previous chapter.

And if I am honest, I do not like that.

I have spent most of my life trying to understand why things happen.

Maybe that comes from surviving meningococcal disease.

Maybe it comes from growing up with trauma.

Maybe it comes from spending years battling addiction.

Maybe it comes from having more surgeries than I can count.

Maybe it comes from watching people leave.

Maybe it comes from spending a lifetime trying to understand pain.

Whatever the reason, I have always wanted explanations.

I want things to make sense.

I want reasons.

I want clarity.

I want closure.

I want God to show me the blueprint.

But He rarely does.

At least not in my experience.

Most of the time He seems content giving enough light for the next step while refusing to reveal the entire path.

And I hate that sometimes.

I really do.

People often talk about faith as if it is easy.

As if trusting God is some effortless experience where peace simply arrives and never leaves.

That has not been my experience.

My experience has often looked more like wrestling.

Questions.

Frustration.

Silence.

Waiting.

Trusting when I would rather understand.

Following when I would rather have certainty.

Looking for answers that have no questions.

That is where I find myself this morning.

Sitting with coffee.

Sitting with disappointment.

Sitting with uncertainty.

Trying to process an ending I did not expect.

Trying to celebrate a beginning I did not fully anticipate.

Trying to hold both realities at the same time.

And maybe that is what adulthood actually is.

Learning how to hold competing emotions simultaneously.

Because I am grateful.

And heartbroken.

Hopeful.

And disappointed.

Excited.

And angry.

All at the same time.

People often think emotions have to exist independently.

That if you are grateful you cannot be grieving.

That if you trust God you cannot be confused.

That if you have faith you cannot feel disappointed.

I do not believe that anymore.

Some of the most honest moments in Scripture came from people who loved God deeply while simultaneously questioning what He was doing.

David did it.

Jeremiah did it.

Job certainly did it.

Even Jesus cried out from the cross.

Faith has never required the absence of emotion.

If anything, real faith often exists right in the middle of it.

So this morning I am not pretending.

I am not going to write some polished version of events that makes me sound more spiritual than I actually feel.

I am angry that Bible college ended the way it did.

I am disappointed.

I feel blindsided.

I feel frustrated.

And I feel a genuine sense of loss.

There.

I said it.

Because if I cannot be honest before God then what is the point?

He already knows anyway.

The reality is I invested part of my life into that journey.

I invested time.

Energy.

Prayer.

Hope.

Expectation.

And now it is over.

Not gradually.

Not eventually.

Yesterday.

Just like that.

And there is a part of me that wants answers.

There is a part of me that wants explanations.

There is a part of me that wants to understand why.

But sometimes life refuses to provide immediate explanations.

Sometimes the only thing you can do is sit in the discomfort.

Sit in the tension.

Sit in the uncertainty.

And trust God there.

Not because you feel strong.

Because you have nowhere else to stand.

I have noticed something looking back over my life.

Many of the chapters that made the least sense while I was living them eventually became chapters I understood later.

Not immediately.

Sometimes years later.

Sometimes decades later.

At the time they felt like setbacks.

Later they revealed themselves as redirections.

At the time they felt like losses.

Later they revealed themselves as preparation.

At the time they felt unfair.

Later they revealed wisdom I could not see.

I wonder how many things in my life fit that pattern.

Meningococcal disease certainly did.

At eighteen years old I could not see purpose.

I could only see pain.

Fear.

Loss.

Trauma.

Yet twenty years later I can see how deeply that experience shaped me.

The same can be said for addiction.

When I was trapped inside it, all I could see was darkness.

Shame.

Failure.

Self-destruction.

Now I can see how God used even those broken years to build compassion in me for other people carrying hidden battles.

The same is true for heartbreak.

For disappointment.

For rejection.

For suffering.

For loss.

So maybe one day I will look back at this week and understand something I cannot currently see.

Maybe.

Or maybe I will not.

The older I get, the more comfortable I become with the possibility that I may never receive every answer.

That is a difficult truth.

But it is reality.

Some questions get answered.

Some do not.

Some mysteries remain mysteries.

Yet somehow God remains God regardless.

I think one of the things that has been on my heart recently is the difference between calling and location.

For years I connected ministry with particular environments.

Certain structures.

Certain pathways.

Certain expectations.

But lately I have been wondering if ministry is much bigger than we often make it.

I work in a hospital now.

I walk hallways.

I clean environments.

I interact with patients.

Visitors.

Nurses.

Doctors.

Staff.

People from every background imaginable.

And I find myself asking a simple question.

Who says ministry stopped?

Maybe it just changed shape.

Maybe ministry was never confined to classrooms.

Maybe it was never confined to platforms.

Maybe it was never confined to specific titles.

Maybe ministry is simply carrying Christ wherever you happen to be.

If that is true, then perhaps God has not removed me from ministry at all.

Perhaps He is teaching me something about it.

I do not know.

I genuinely do not know.

But I am thinking about it.

A lot.

Because I have learned something over the years.

God rarely wastes pain.

He rarely wastes transitions.

He rarely wastes confusion.

He rarely wastes disappointment.

Somehow He has a way of working inside things that initially look broken.

I have seen it too many times to dismiss it.

Not just in my life.

In other people's lives too.

The stories that inspire me most are rarely the stories where everything worked perfectly.

They are the stories where people walked through fire and somehow discovered God there.

Not after the fire.

In it.

That matters to me this morning.

Because right now I do not need polished answers.

I need God.

Not explanations.

Not theories.

Not clichés.

Him.

His presence.

His faithfulness.

His guidance.

His peace.

Even if I cannot fully feel it right now.

I think about the last month at Gold Coast University Hospital.

One month ago I was stepping into unfamiliar territory.

Today it already feels normal.

That happened faster than I expected.

Maybe that is another reminder that human beings adapt.

We adjust.

We learn.

We survive.

We keep moving forward even when we think we cannot.

And perhaps that is what I need to remember today.

Not every chapter has to be understood immediately.

Not every ending requires instant closure.

Not every transition arrives with clear instructions.

Sometimes you simply take the next step.

Then the next one.

Then the next one.

Trusting that God is already present in places you have not reached yet.

As I finish this coffee and prepare for the day ahead, I still have questions.

A lot of them.

I still have disappointment.

I still have frustration.

I still have sadness.

I still have moments where I want to understand what happened yesterday.

But alongside all of that there is something else.

A quiet awareness that my story is not over.

This chapter ended.

That much is true.

But the story continues.

God is still writing.

Still working.

Still moving.

Even when I cannot see the full picture.

And maybe that is enough for today.

Not certainty.

Not answers.

Not understanding.

Just enough grace for today.

Enough grace for one more step.

Enough grace for one more chapter.

Enough grace for a man sitting quietly with his morning coffee trying to make sense of a life that keeps changing.

One month into Queensland Health.

One day removed from Bible college.

Standing somewhere between disappointment and hope.

Between grief and gratitude.

Between endings and beginnings.

I stumbled across a powerful l quote from a little girl that battled and overcome cancer and it burned into my soul when I saw it and she wrote after overcoming the battle Its just turbulence.

And I carry that into my next season.

And trusting, however imperfectly, that God is still present in the middle of it all.

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About the Author

Dylan Verdun Sullivan is the founder of Refined by Fire Press and an Australian author indexed in the National Library of Australia. As a Level 7 Local Guide with over 3.9 million views on Google Maps, he documents the intersection of faith, recovery, and the light found in ordinary places.

• Read the Memoir: Kissed by Death on Amazon
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