Once Upon a Change

Movement and Rest

Dear Reader,

In the next two weeks, I will be moving (locally) and starting my second year of graduate school. My summer has been verdant with the gift of falling in love and its own intoxicating abundances. I have been struggling to admit that my commitment to writing here weekly might need to be adjusted; but alas, I have decided that this will prove most beneficial. I will take the next few weeks to be quiet here and give myself fully to these changes! I will write more in late September. Thank you, as always, for reading.

Here are three things bouncing around in my heart as I sign off for a few weeks.

“Christ is contingency.”

Christian Wiman said this in his book My Bright Abyss. I cannot shake it. I cannot understand it, and yet, I get it.

I met him this past April, after hearing him speak at the Festival of Faith and Writing. I was standing in line, holding his newest book, Zero at the Bone, that I had just bought moments before and waiting to say hello and have him sign it. A lady approaches and gives me a sticky note and instructs me to write exactly what I want him to sign. I can only think of this one thing: Christ is contingency. I ask my friend Katy if it would be offensive to an author write an old thing in a new book. She tells me it should be fine.

When I meet him, he looks at the sticky note intrigued, like, did I say this? but he obliged.

My spiritual director tells me that Jesus is only in the present moment. I don’t know. I thought God was in the future, too, but I am comforted by this one reality, and I know why she tells me this. It’s usually after I am fretting about the future or whining about the past. Be still, she says. Jesus is here. Here is always changing. Christ is with us in all the change.

“The highway goes both ways.”

This is something my Dad told me in young adulthood. A reminder that I can always come home. I have always been running off—Australia and New Zealand at 15, Vietnam at 17, college in Birmingham, Alabama… I loved setting off for adventures because I had a home I felt safe and secure in. I could always come back.

This is comforting; this is maddening. It seems life is full of leaving and returning. We are given, we are received. We leave, we return. In my young adulthood, I have been waiting to arrive. Turns out, there is a reason it is so elusive: it is impossible. At least, not in the ways that make your identity sturdy.

In these verdant pastures of love, a new craving has stirred up: a sense of home, belonging, community. And lo and behold, though my family lives scattered across the country, God has given me so many other families to link arms with. I once wrote about a time I lived in in the country, and I’ll be returning there for a season.

I have left and returned too many times to count, now. Another reality is also true, though: You can never go back. I think this is something we learn upon returning. It all is worth it, and it all can be bountiful with beauty.

“You know when you know.”

This is something I’ve heard often about romantic love, said with shrugs and a helplessness. A mystery. It might as well be the creed of modern love: “You know when you know.” Modernity brought us choice—our marriages are not arranged, after all, at least in Western societies—but subtext in our choosing is you don’t really choose. You just know. I imagined this feeling would smack me across the face so hard, my life would be immediately upended. I would see shooting stars behind the face of my love—barely able to focus, from the stars or the face of my beloved, I’m not sure— but there would be no time for curiosity or wondering or “I’m not sure…” In fact, being unsure was the direct opposite of what true love is.

I was so hungry for this immediate certainty that I once imagined God whispered in my ear, “This man is your husband.” At the time, this man was engaged. Oops, I told God, my bad. But then I learned this man’s engagement was broken, and I turned my face to the heavens and said, so, are we back on, or…? This is the man that I write about here, who, spoiler alert, I never married.

By the way, what makes me touch my heart in compassion, is that I was deeply influenced by many Christian women, chief among them author Elisabeth Elliot who wrote of her love story in Passion and Purity. The point of the book was essentially: do not have sex before marriage. It is possible, she argues, based on her 5 year epic saga with Jim Elliot. What I took away, however, was not anything about sex (I thought we didn’t want that as Christian women anyway?) but was this: your spouse will be chosen by God and revealed to you with this… knowing.

There is a children’s book by P.D. Eastman titled “Are You My Mother?”, in which a baby bird hatches while the mother is away, so the bird leaves the nest in search of its mother. It encounters a kitten, a dog, a cow, a boat, plane, crane… and we all giggle with delight knowing how silly! That’s not your Mother!

Do you know how many men in my life I have “are you my mother-ed?”

God bless them.

Do you know how many people in my life I have “are my god-ed?”

Oof. Chief among them is every man I have dated. God bless them.

As Hitoshi and I continue learning and growing together, I would say now, “I know that I know.” And while I am completely enthralled, delighted, charmed, and consumed with him these days, I can report that I was not smacked in the head with this mysterious knowing. (Unless you count that summer in 2022, when I did feel pummeled over by a magnetic feeling, and then promptly ignored it for two more years. I do not advise this.)

The point is: knowing is important, but in my experience, it has come with time, and through the breaking of my own fantasies both of my self and what this partner would offer me. Love truly is patient, and generally manages fine without much fanfare. This knowing has come through experience and not necessarily revelation, and for that, I am grateful.

Peace abounds.

Wherever you find yourself, in whatever season, may you experience peace that passes understanding. Here’s to practicing what I preach, and learning to rest as I experience all this change.

Until September,

Becca

Photo by Jacob Kiesow on Unsplash