About This Blog

Welcome to Beautiful Upheaval.

Chances are pretty good you have landed on this page in some sort of major transition... a move, a broken relationship, a career change, a life stage transition, a death.

Transition is hard. Transition is disorienting. But take heart, the unfamiliar landscape will not last forever. A new beauty can be found even in the most devastating of changes. It just takes time.

And if you give in well to this season, deep, formative work will be done in your heart. We are not the same people on the other side of major transitions.

This blog is designed to be a resource in bite-sized chunks for people in transition. For you. For your family. For your friends. For your co-workers. Not every post will be relevant to you, but someone else may come to mind. Pass them on.

These nuggets of wisdom come from many of the interactions over the years in our work at a wholistic care center in Southern Spain which provides counseling, training, healing prayer, and spiritual care for global workers.

The bulk of the people we work with are in some form of transition: moving cross-culturally, making vocational changes, seeking healing for all types of brokenness, navigating major conflicts in their work, and/or dealing with theological boxes that have been broken open by the suffering they have seen in their work.

More than anything, you need to know that this disorientation is normal. At any given moment each of us is transitioning in some area of our lives: vocational, life stage, relational, spiritual, physical, etc (see my post on "What type of transition are you in?").

The more areas of transition you are experiencing, the greater your upheaval.

Very often in upheaval, our way forward becomes covered with fog, and we feel like we’re unclear about how to move forward. Sometimes we willingly engage in a transition, other times a transition is forced upon us. Either way, it's easy to lose sight of the big picture. I hope to be a resource to keep pointing you towards how to "cooperate forward" on a new path.

And lastly, we cannot venture into the topic of transitions without mentioning faith. Upheaval has a way of bringing us face-to-face with our core beliefs about God, self, and others. The fragility of our life's framework may suddenly become apparent. Our understanding of God may be rocked. Our theology may be challenged. Our familiar pathways of connecting with God may grow stale.

In the chaos of change, I hope to point you to the heart of God--the safest place to seek refuge in instability. Ours is a God who is open to questions, strong emotions, and human frailty.

May you receive hope and wisdom from this blog as we journey together,

Amy LaViolette Galloway, M.A.