Sometimes to embrace newness means coming to terms with the passing away—or at the very least the changing—of the old. 

And sometimes this brings about a deep-seated fear inside you. You look at the established patterns and structures of your life: the activities and accomplishments that to some extent defined you and gave your life meaning. You look at these, and, in the face of an in-breaking newness you realize that they are changing, or even possibly fading away. 

In a way, to be afraid of this level of change is to be entirely human. This is really DNA-level change, or at least it appears so. 

On first glance, The New can affect every aspect of your status quo: the activities you through yourself into, the achievements that gave you meaning and a sense of purpose and growth, and even the resources and tools that you have acquired to do the work. 

All of that is now “in play” and are candidates for irrelevancy. 

In other words, it feels like there’s potential for The New to shake and change your entire world. 

On the one hand, don’t be afraid to feel this and to name it. To declare that the fear is real and if affecting you. 

On the other hand, The New is also a message of next, of new beginnings, of unforeseen opportunities for both blessing and meaning, for both significance and purpose and craft. 

So, work hard to stay in the flow. To cling to the old—the activities, the accomplishments, the resources—is not ultimately helpful. And yet, there may not be a “hard stop.” It may be an evolving process, one where you leave one frontier and have journey through a wilderness or desert before you encounter the new land. 

There is no recipe, and not even a clear road map for the journey, but if you walk with a sense of watchfulness and humility and ask for help from other pilgrims along the way, you can navigate your way into the place to which The New is beckoning.