Tag Archives: change

I Will Change, I Will Not Change

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I fear Christian belief will have no real impact on my life. I’m aware that addiction, divorce, and abuse in the home wreak havoc among Christians as well as non-Christians. And the things we do to feel better about ourselves happen among Christians as well—keeping our stories and our houses as clean as possible, consuming coffee and sugar at alarming rates, moving from one place (or church) to another to escape the consequences of a damaging lifestyle or broken relationship.

Until recently, I spent little time considering the opposite fear—that God will influence, transform or otherwise impact me and my life. Carl McColman, author and fellow blogger, suggests, “Our deepest fear is not that there is no God. Our deepest fear is that God does exist and wants to become an intimate part of our lives, changing us forever.”1 I want to argue with him, but I can’t. I do fear God’s influence in my life. Chances are, He has a different list (does God have lists?) of priorities than I do, and His presence will affect change. I cannot sit with Him and expect to remain the same. This is unnerving at best, terrifying at worst, but also the thing I want more than anything else.

I hold both fears at once—that I will be changed, and that I will not be changed. McColman puts it in relational terms—the fear of loneliness/abandonment, or the fear of being engulfed. I want to keep God, and my dearest human companions, in a safe little space between those two realities. In this space, I will experience a controlled situation in which I am neither left nor overwhelmed.

There is no such space in intimate relationship. It’s not that God is in the business of leaving or overwhelming people. Rather, relationship is consent to be influenced. I am changed by the people I spend time with, and I, in turn, affect those same people. Is this also true in divine relationship? The Apostle Paul wrote, “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.” (2 Corinthians 3:18 ESV)

I’m not sure I want to be unveiled with God. Isn’t that dangerous? Maybe we can work something out where I get to wear a veil. I’ll submit my list of prayer requests without approaching God. No need to bother Him; I know He’ll take care of things. Also, if His activity in my life is based on me doing a good job, I don’t need to spend time with Him. I can focus on being a kind and productive person, and He’ll take it from there. There are countless ways to avoid the influence of relationship. Keep it professional. Make rules. Perform. Retreat.

I suppose “influence” would be a good word to describe what happens when two people spend time together. Where does that leave control? “To have control is to have the power to run something in an orderly way.”2 Does God have this power? Is the universe orderly? Yes, it is, and no, it isn’t.

Influence is “the power to change or affect someone or something—especially the power to cause changes without directly forcing those changes to happen.”3 If I say God has influence but not control, have I emasculated Him in my view, or am I getting closer to freedom?

In a previous post I wrote, “Perhaps love is the pain of not being in control.” At the time of that writing, I explored what this means in terms of fearing my own feelings. Feelings often run free of logic and control, and therefore, I have tended to avoid them. Now, as I consider this statement in terms of relationship with God, it occurs to me this is a two-way street. God relinquishes control of me, and I relinquish control of Him. I believe this is painful for both of us.

At the same time, it is comforting. I approach God without the intent to control Him, knowing that likewise, He will not control me. I do not consent to be engulfed; I consent to be influenced. I do not consent to abandonment; I consent to a life that is not well-controlled, which is messy because love and free will are messy. Proximity includes vulnerability.

It is here that I may begin to love God. Also here is the shocking possibility that God allows me to influence Him. I don’t know how to love the Lord my God with all my heart. The best I’ve come up with in the past involved being respectful to Him, and nice to the person in front of me. There’s nothing wrong with that. But is it relationship?

I find no tidy conclusion, but I’ve stumbled upon a desire for consensual relationship with God. And so, I consent to be influenced. I consent to the pain of love, which is the pain of not having control. I accept that knowing God will change me, and it will not change me. I receive the fear of being an average human, the terror of becoming more, and all that it means to love because He first loved me.

Endnotes:
1McColman, Carl. The Big Book of Christian Mysticism, page 204.
2https://www.vocabulary.com/dictionary/control#:~:text=To%20have%20control%20is%20to,remote%20control%20for%20a%20television
3https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/influence#:~:text=In%20modern%20use%2C%20the%20noun,something%20in%20an%20important%20way

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Blessed are You,
Lord our God,
King of the Universe,
for the ways
we fertilize change
and for the ways
change escapes
our eager efforts.
We work,
and something happens,
or nothing.
We do not work
and nothing happens,
or something.

We try hard,
then harder.
The problem worsens.
We invest long years
until: success,
or, the loss of a dream
we didn’t know was a dream
until it vaporized
and broke our hearts.

Blessed are You,
Lord our God,
King of the Universe,
for giving us much influence
and little control,
for standing beside us
as we watch our labor
burn to the ground,
or produce one hundred fold,
always saving us from the lie
that our value lives in
what we have made or lost.
Your grace exposes our folly
and assures us that whether
our legacy is beauty or pain
(likely both)
we are fields of treasure.

“Overnight Success”

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“I wish someone had told me,” I said to my husband over lunch last week. “Not that I would have been able to hear it,” I admitted before continuing, “I had no idea that someday our kids would start doing all the things I’ve told them over and over. It’s like that saying, ‘An overnight success ten years in the making.’”

“Yes,” my husband, Michael, agreed. “I’ve noticed Kayt has been more independent and responsible. She told me the other day she wants to be more clean and proper when she eats.”

I laughed. It’s a well known fact in our family that Kayt’s place at the at the table (including the floor underneath) can be identified by the generous sprinkling and smearing of food after every meal.

I stood by the microwave heating my second serving of leftovers. “She keeps asking me if her face is clean, every time we go somewhere. She used to not care at all. And she seems more mature, calmer, kind of grown up. It’s so weird. It feels like it happened all of a sudden.”

It has been two months since our older daughter Kayt turned ten, and in many ways it seems she aged three years at once. I guess this makes up for the first year of her life, which felt like three. Lately she disappears to read a book for an hour, doesn’t come looking for me first thing in the morning, and takes on random projects like cleaning her drawer in the bathroom. She asked to decorate the mantle for Christmas, so I brought the bin of Christmas knick-knacks and (mostly) left her to it. She started with layers of wide holiday-colored cloth ribbon. Next she arranged snow globes toward one end, set up the nativity in the middle, and created a scene with a nutcracker pulling a Christmas tree on a sled at the other end. Then she added a string of tiny lights through it all. I’m prone to tweak things after my kids do them—straighten this, move that (I know, I know. I’m working on being less controlling). But I looked at that beautiful Christmassy spread and thought it turned out better than when I do it. Oh, and don’t forget she dusted the mantle before she started decorating (gasp).

After a decade of repeating myself until I lost two or three levels of sanity, this truly feels like a miracle. I wonder if my tone of voice would have been kinder for the past ten years if I had believed someday my kids would actually clear their dishes, close the back door, clean up after themselves, and respond with action when I say, “Please hang up your wet towel. It’s not good to leave it on the wood floor.”

Along with relief, joy, and pride, I feel a twinge of sadness. For too long Kayt’s dependance was so heavy on me all I wanted was to be alone—for as long as possible. Now that it has begun to melt away, I miss it. I feel like a crazy person, wishing for the very thing I found so loathsome. I find solace knowing that every generation before me has felt these same feelings.

I wonder what connection looks like now. We’ve connected over trimming fingernails and combing hair, reading story books and preparing snacks—and in the younger years, dressing and eating, zipping coats and tying shoes. When she doesn’t need me to process every emotion and supervise every activity, what will we do together? Have I been a safe enough person that she will continue to come to me even when she doesn’t have to?

If anything, parenting has taught me that life happens in seasons, and seasons change. I’ll probably get a good dose of clingyness from Kayt when I least want it, and I’m confident we have ahead of us many challenges to navigate together. Teenage years will come and I will be surprised by how they differ from my expectations, just as I have been surprised at every other stage. So for now I enjoy quieter days, smile when I notice the clean kitchen counter after Kayt baked scones, and shed a tear when I miss the terrifying blessing of being needed all the time.