Permitting Change

I'm writing this to you more as a form of processing out loud, rather than speaking as an expert on the subject...which I most assuredly am not. Well. Unless you want to consider me an expert in how to struggle with this...and then I qualify.

I'm going to keep the identifying details on this story as vague as I can, for the preservation of my own dignity as well as to protect any sort of identification of the other person in the story. She doesn't even know of this situation, and there's certainly no need for her feelings to be hurt in any way because I have issues.

Several years ago...{s.e.v.e.r.a.l.}...I was at an event with a young woman who appeared, at first, perfectly normal, perfectly nice, and perfectly level headed. She was beautiful, and from my little chair in the distance, I envied her for being the perfect, put-together person she appeared to be.

And then she opened her mouth.

As did I...slack-jawed by the offensive junior-high-ish behavior that emitted from her. The beauty faded for me entirely, and I tried to tune out the words...but alas, her lungs were healthy and I couldn't avoid hearing. Eventually I had to leave, and I was an unhealthy combination of sad and bitter that she'd driven me out of something I'd looked forward to attending.

We don't travel in the same circles, so I don't see her regularly, but now and then I'll see her from a distance, and every time I do, I bristle. I don't mean to. It just happens. But I've done nothing to stop it. I let the bristles bristle and before long, my blood runs bubbly in my veins as I remember the transgressions from so long ago.

When I saw her recently, though, I noticed something. {In the 30 seconds between spotting her and the beginning of the bristles.} Her face looked different. Not like old and wrinkly different, but softer, and more matured and settled somehow. I didn't dwell on it, but I noticed it.

And then last Sunday, during the sermon, our pastor preached about how people change...in a good way. About how God grabs hold of people's hearts and transforms them into the people HE created them to be, and they change for the better.

And that's when the conviction plopped over me so fully I'm surprised you can even still see me peeking out from underneath it.

She changed. But I didn't let her.

I could tell from the countenance on her face, that she's not the same girl who offended me with her mouth years ago. She's grown up. She's changed and softened and become molded into the woman God intended. That's what's been happening in real time. But in Bekah-time, a one-evening scenario has been playing on a loop for far too long, and I haven't let her real-time changes infiltrate my mind. I haven't been able to see her as the masterpiece God is making, because I only see the mess from long ago.


And shame. on. me. for it.

I'm 100% confident I'm not the same girl I was that night either. And if she would have looked my way then, I'd want her to kindly dismiss that girl and see instead the girl I am now. Because God's been working on and in me too.

I've been holding her accountable for the person she used to be instead of seeing her with eyes of love for the woman God has transformed her into today.

People change. They do. And I need to let them.

{Disclaimer: sometimes people don't change. They don't let God transform them, heart and soul. They don't grow in love and favor with the Lord. And sometimes it's good to put a protective hedge up if their lack of transformation is harmful toward us. That much is true.}

Later that same day, after Pastor Steve's convicting sermon, I read these words by Dr. Tony Evans: "God will never define you by your past, but the enemy will try to confine you by it."

Gulp.

The enemy had been tricking me into confining that girl in front of me to the girl she used to be. The problem is, God's not using that to define her anymore.

So that's what I'm working on this week. Working on learning to see people with fresh vision each time I see them. Working on learning to let them change and not confining them to the people they used to be.