You Are Allowed To Change

My mother studied my face, uncertain.

I always, always loved her visits.  Newly married and farther from home than I ever expected to be, I always looked forward to seeing her and to the holiday our visits had become.  We shopped and ate and laughed and talked, talked, talked for hours. 

But our visits were also of a reminder of the time that passed between them.

“Your eyes,” she finally realized.  “Is that eyeliner?”

“Yeah,” I said.  I had learned how to apply it—finally—from a makeup-smart friend, who had steered me away from harsh black eyeliner to a dark brown that looked exactly like I wanted it to look.  “I love it.”

I hoped she’d say it made my eyes look good.  Or ask about what had prompted me to explore new makeup.  Or simply move on to another topic.  Instead she paused.  “Well.  That’s different.”

And so it was, though that word didn’t always seem to mean something good.

The time that lapsed between our visits made evident the changes and small transformations that had become commonplace for me long ago.  “What’s this?” Mom asked once, startled by a new set of throw pillows and curtains I’ve chosen for the living room.  “This isn’t your taste.”  She seemed bewildered by new clothes that worked their way into the rotation, the desire I had developed to learn Japanese, the cultivation of new hobbies.

To her, those things weren’t “me.”  Except now they were.

I always grew frustrated by those exchanges.  Sometimes, when I took a particular comment to heart, they turned into arguments.  Looking back, I wish they hadn’t and that I’d been more graceful.  Change is hard.  Being told that you’ve changed is hard.

It’s also entirely normal and natural.  We’re meant to grow.

It’s a tempting thing to put the people we love into stasis.  To expect them to somehow remain the same forever.  It’s an affectionate urge: we love who and how they are.  But it’s also impossible to do so.

Marriage can be a unique teacher in this regard.  I’ve known my husband for decades.  When I married him, neither of us was what I would call a fitness buff.  At most, we took long meandering walks together: we were never the couple that exercised or engaged fitness in any meaningful way.  We took a sort of unintentional pride in it.  There were “exercise people” and we were Not Them.

But during the pandemic this man I thought I knew purchased a stationary bike, and it turned him into a homegrown Lance Armstrong.  He rides every day and has done so for years now.  He rides with obsessive, lunatic devotion.  He loves this bike.  Riding it has become as necessary and critical to him as showering.

To be clear: I did not sign up for a husband who immediately darts off after dinner to ride his stationary bike until he emerges a gross, sweaty mess a half hour later.  I had no desire to marry someone that devoted to a particular fitness practice.  I didn’t expect him to become an “exercise person”; I didn’t understand it.

But I love him.    And even though I didn’t understand this particular evolution,  I embraced it.  I bought him bike gloves and music to play while he rode.  I tried not to discourage his passion.  He’s done the same for me as I’ve grown and changed.  This is what married people must do, actually, to remain close to each other: to understand, embrace, and accept the continued growth of a person you’ve known and loved for many years.

But we don’t often give ourselves this grace, and we don’t often extend it to faith.

I think somehow that many of us expect to be the same Christians at 40 as were at 18.  And yet, as I look back over the years, I realize I could never.  Much has remained the same, of course—but much has changed, too.  I understand suffering far more intimately now than I did as a teenager, and so Jesus means something more and different to me now than he did then.  I’ve experienced the love of God differently.  I’ve experienced different Christian traditions.

I’m more me than I’ve ever been, but I’ve also changed from who I was.

That’s not to say of course that all change is good.  There can be dark and dangerous changes: the ones that evolve our worst impulses, draw us from God, and lead us to destruction and death.  But there are good and positive and simply natural changes that aren’t these, that happen as a result of our being in the world, and that are worth embracing.

The believer who never felt comfortable doing more than listening in the pew might, one day, grow into someone who desires charismatic worship.  The freeform evangelical might turn to liturgy.    The person who has always adored big churches with big crowds might evolve into preferring small homespun congregations.  We might change worship styles or favorite books of Scripture; we might find that statues of the suffering Christ suddenly touch us in a way they didn’t before; we might start wearing jeans to church when we only wore dress clothes.  Our devotional times and practices might change and reshape themselves.

We might come to know parts of God more intimately than we did before.  And that is especially beautiful.

God has only ever required us to be faithful to who he called us to be.  And Scripture tells us He is always working on us, always growing us, always shaping us.  It stands to reason then that as individuals in faith we will change and grow in ways that might surprise us and even others. 

These changes aren’t loss.  And they aren’t bad.  They might be different, as my mother would put it—perhaps not what others expected of us or even what we expected of ourselves.  But that’s okay, too.  There is room for change in the body of Christ, room for us to continue to become who we are in Him as we learn more about ourselves, about His love, as we move through the phases of our lives.

Stasis can be a kind of death; God’s dynamic love is always pushing us to something new.

Yes, it’s different.  And that’s okay.