The Right Way to Change (in Literature and in Life)

Pots – Water Pots (Photo credit: NisargPhotography)

As a writer, I struggle to create the pieces of a story that can’t be revealed through dialogue and plot. Part of the reason I struggle with this in writing is because I struggle with it in life. In everyday interactions, I rely almost entirely on what people tell me and what happens. Partly, I’m this way because as a teenager, I decided that it’s incredibly unfair to hypothesize or make assumptions about another person, and thus made it my mission to maintain a perception that matched up as completely as possible to the observable, real-world person in front of me as I could. However well-intentioned I may have been in trying to avoid unfair judgment of another person, though, I inadvertently led myself away from looking beneath the surface, which is quite the tragedy, because most of who we are is beneath the surface. For example, a character or person’s shifts of identity and heart might slowly manifest themselves in his or her behavior and speech, but the change occurs long before it becomes observable.

But how do I write that?

Also, how do people actually change?

Several years ago, there was someone who started attending my church, and almost immediately set out to change some of our stances on issues and certain doctrines we held to. When Dave (Pastor) and I were talking about the situation, I was overwhelmingly sympathetic to the new person. I expressed my beliefs that she wasn’t ill-intentioned and that she needed grace, as well as my broken-heartedness for her; I viewed the church’s response to her as a little mean.

Then Dave said something. He said that God is the one who changes us; she doesn’t get to direct that change.

As a writer, I’m ridiculously well-planned. I don’t like starting without an outline for each and every chapter, along with any number of other “plotter” tactics in place. I write character sketches; I create soundtracks for each scene; I draw maps, and I even create Sims characters or draw really bad sketches to ensure that nothing is left to chance… I have to know everything about every aspect of the story before I write. Then, I force my characters to do what I want them to do, and get frustrated when the plan has to change. And, instead of changing the plan, I just throw all of my work out and start all over at the beginning.

But what if there’s something to just sitting down and writing. I don’t subscribe to all the hippie, “pantser” mumbo-jumbo about letting the characters show me the story, but I also probably shouldn’t outline myself into a corner, eh?

In life, I’ve been trying pretty hard for the past couple of years to just see what happens. I usually stick myself into certain, highly-arbitrary routines, and force myself to keep them, but it seemed like God was ruining all of my routines for awhile there, so I thought that might have been His way of telling me to knock it off.

So I stopped.

I stopped planning every moment of every day; I stopped keeping routines that I didn’t feel like keeping; I stopped attending events that I didn’t have a good reason for attending… I just stopped.

And it’s really difficult to just exist and wait, but that’s what I’ve been doing. I know it probably doesn’t seem like that from the outside, because what others see is that I bought a house, signed up to go to Asia next year, shifted my teaching focus from ELLs to gen. ed., etc…. But, believe it or not, I haven’t been trying to do anything at all. I’ve just let things come my way. or not. and I’ve been patient.

Because changes happen mysteriously and invisibly, and it’s not for me to direct them.

Going off of what’s observable, it seems as if I’m changing in a few specific ways… but those changes are imaginary. Instead, God is changing me how He wills, in ways that haven’t yet manifested  themselves in words or actions.

Still, in the two years that I’ve been trying to be patient and malleable, a few people have said and done things that seem an awful lot like creating a Sim character of me and then trying to make me into that character.

And each time, I’ve felt myself struggling that same internal conflict that came with the new girl who wanted to change a church’s doctrines: Am I being mean by ignoring other people’s aims for me? Sometimes it feels mean, because I know what it feels like to look at another and think I know what he should do and be. I know what it feels like to believe I see his primary flaw and the one change that he should make in his life because it would fix everything.

And that’s why I’m still writing Weston’s story – because I’ve fixed him rather than letting him change slowly, invisibly, in a way that I can’t contrive.

So, while I know (all-too-well) the urge to just fix the problem, I’m trying to do a better job of reserving myself for the changes God has in mind for me (and for Weston too). It’s entirely possible that the flaws people see in me and the ones I see in Weston are terrible and need fixing… but those flaws aren’t for human hands to reshape, because only God’s hands are strong enough to change earthen vessels.

 

The Ones You Can Hardly Leave Behind

Photo via Wikipedia commons

Sometimes, life makes me feel like I’m not learning anything. I start seeing myself as stuck, stationary, and, consequentially, superfluous.

This summer has not been one of those times.

For a good, long while, I’ve contemplated need.

Need for people. Need for people to be other than what they are. I oftentimes struggle through relationships because I don’t understand need, because I do my best not to need. On the flip side of that, I struggle with other people needing me, because I don’t understand why they think they should expect anything of me when I expect nothing of them.

*Now, of course this is oversimplifying things. This is categorizing me a bit too strictly, because there are, and have always been times, when I’ve needed others. I just know that I could have done a lot more needing and being needed in the past, and plan to do more of both of those in the future.*

Two Christmases ago, I spent my first holiday without family. My parents and sister (along with her husband and kiddos) went to North Carolina, and I didn’t quite have the money or desire to leave the desert, so we did things separately.

That was pretty scary. I had made plans with some friends, but I didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t know if I was allowed to hang out all day, or maybe it would just fill a couple of hours and I’d be alone to fill the silence after that. I didn’t know if I’d have fun and want to stay the whole time, or be counting down the minutes until I could leave.

It ended up being a wonderful Christmas.

Then last year, I figured I’d spend half of the holiday days with family and half with friends. But, when Thanksgiving rolled around, I found out that family holidays weren’t what I thought they’d be, and I couldn’t rely on them… so I spent my first Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve with friends, and my second Christmas Day with them – all wonderful.

So as the year rolls forward and the upcoming seasons include busy schedules, family move, birthday parties, and holiday fun, I’m beginning to see my friends as benefactors of an inheritance I don’t deserve. They’ve given me tradition, affection, stability, and they’ve claimed me.

I’m also realizing that I need those benefactors. I need their provision for all of those things and more, which is SOOOOO scary.

As I was floating along in the Caribbean this summer, I missed them so much more than I wanted to, and when they picked me up at the airport, I couldn’t have been more shocked with affection. My holiday benefactors plus that one person who created and is my current home, picked me up and immediately supplied friendship and fun. I was tired and land-sick (from standing on dry land after getting used to floating on water), and I’d spent the entire day traveling and thinking about my bed, but I didn’t care about any of that, because I needed them no matter how late I had to stay up, because being with the people you need is more fulfilling than even sleep .

Then, this weekend, a few of us went to Flagstaff, and as we enjoyed the best meal of my life, one of the greatest views in the world, and walking in the rain, we also talked about returning soon, because one of our number was absent, and we needed him to be there to make the trip whole.

Such thoughts are foreign to me, but I’ve seen slow changes of heart that make me think differently about next year and the year after that. Just like with the cruise, I can’t hardly imagine leaving these people behind, and I know I’ll spend my thoughts enjoying where I’m at, but feeling a little incomplete going it without my closest benefactors. Cambodia is suddenly much too far away to go to alone. And when I get married and make babies, I need the friends who’ve provided for me as only family does.

Although every fear and practicality in me believes that these current thoughts and desires, my benefactors, and every good thing in life are only temporary, I’m starting to want and hope they’ll be forever.

I’m starting to think about putting down some roots and moving in across the street so our kids can ride bikes together. I know a heart doesn’t fully change overnight, and the thoughts I’m having are only inklings of possibility, but it’s nice to see myself growing up more than I ever expected to. It’s nice to begin to believe in the impossible.