I Need New Pants

Spiritual Direction and growth of all kinds

“You have so much to look forward to,” Sharon* told me one sunny day in April. I was holding a Kleenex in my right hand, staring at her sitting across from me.

Sharon is a Roman Catholic nun at the Sisters of Mercy convent across from the Opryland Hotel. I’ve been seeing her monthly since last fall for spiritual direction. Sisters of Mercy is a home for retired nuns. Imagine if the library and a nursing home combined forces: less books, no nurses, and a sweet, hospitable silence.

After our visits, she walks me from the room we meet in down the long hallway out to the front door. Just last week she kept going and walked me to my car, where we discovered we both drive Honda Civics. We squealed with delight. Who knew such a small commonality could connect us with childlike glee?

Once, upon my departure, we started talking of yoga. She was trying to describe a pose she enjoys, when she recognized by the look on my face that I could not visualize it. She grabbed my arm, looked both ways down the hall and whispered, “We’re not supposed to do this, since falling can be so fatal around here—” then dropped to the ground, laid on her back, and threw her legs against the wall. “Like this,” she motions, her legs opening and closing like scissors. “Ahhhhhh,” I say, smiling. She jumps back up, looking around to make sure no one caught us.

In her early 70’s, she’s as spunky and radiant as I was in college. She always begins her prayers with, “Gracious and loving God…” and I have stolen the phrase and snuck it into my own lexicon of Endearing Salutations for my Higher Power. She teaches me about the maternal presence of God, and her love makes me feel like I’m sitting under a weeping willow. The Holy Spirit, that holy wind, swooshing in and out and around, while I sit under her wisdom and feel enveloped by her leaves, her wings, her care.

Sometimes I give her details of my personal life, other times I speak only of my connection or disconnection with God. She listens, often waiting for a long stretch of silence before responding.

On this particular spring day, I’m telling her of how the Lord has answered my prayers. She passed me the tissue box because I cannot quit crying those heaving tears that feel sweet with gratitude and awe. We are talking of expansion.

“You have so much to look forward to,” she repeats. “Yes… I am aging and my body is changing… but my heart is expanding.” She smiles and kicks her feet up, squirming in her chair with joy.

I knew what she meant.

I recall the time I visited L’Abri Fellowship in the English countryside. A Christian community started by theologian Francis Schaeffer and his wife, Edith, l’abri is a French word meaning “the shelter.” The Schaeffer’s opened the first L’Abri in Switzerland in the 1950’s. I ended up at the one in England for three months in the fall of 2016. It is a place of deep hospitality, welcoming the ideological, theological and philosophical questions with a real and tangible display of Christian care.

There is a guest book that you can sign upon departure, whether you were there for an overnight visit or there for months, like myself. I stood there on the cold December day I was leaving, staring at the blank page. How could I put into words what the last three months meant to me? I decide that I can’t. I draw a stick figure with a heart on top of it and write beside it: Me, before L’Abri. Then I draw an arrow to another stick figure, this time with a heart three times as big, and I write: Me, after L’Abri and sign my name. Expansion.

I’ve noticed another kind of expansion lately: aging. We stretch and sag and start to wobble from all the weight of life. My pants don’t fit like they did in my 20’s. What’s that about?

A few weeks ago I was at a concert, waiting in line for the one public restroom. A man asked if he could jump in front of me. “I just want to try this shirt on real quick,” he says, motioning to the one thrown over his shoulder like a kitchen towel. “My wife says I need the large but I’m going to try the medium just in case.”

I told him I knew exactly what he was talking about and we bemoaned the realities of expanding. (I didn’t tell him this, but, I’ve finally learned that you feel better about all that growth if you buy pants (or shirts) that fit.) When we left the restroom, he only said, “Large” with resignation and a shrug as he walked away.

To be alive is to expand—and contract. Back and forth.

Contraction caught me off guard last week. I was proud of all my growth in heart, body, and mind—when I hurt the one I love. He told me as much, in kindness, and my ego shriveled and my heart and mind decided to take up a defense—I hurt you? Fine, I’ll do it intentionally now, and really show you— until I felt small, miniscule. A version of Honey, I Shrunk the Kids—frantically trying to catch the attention of someone who can’t see me.

Forgiveness is a kind of refreshing— almost magic— water, touching all those shriveled up parts and bringing them back to fullness.

Love—forgiveness, mercy, kindness, grace— is its own kind of expansion, and I suspect that this is the kind that Sharon was speaking of. This is the kind that makes you squirm with delight while your body sags and frays at the edges. The one that makes your heart grow and grow, the one that apostle Paul says is being renewed in our hearts day after day after day after day through the grace of God.¹

That’s some good news. Thank you, Lord.

(Oh, and thank you for stretchy pants.)

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*name changed

1. 2 Corinthians 4:16, “So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day.” (ESV)

2 Corinthians 4:16, “We have much reason to be brave! There might be a lot of wear and tear on the outside; but don’t be distracted by that! On the inside we are celebrating daily revival!” (The Mirror Translation)