When Changes of Mind Frighten Me
The snow took me by surprise yesterday morning.
My children woke us up around 6:30 a.m., and I went to work cooking oatmeal for everyone. As my joints creaked from night, I glanced into the darkened living room to the window. Snow swirled by the window like we were inside a snowglobe. My husband had told me the day before that we should expect snow by the evening that would carry on to Saturday and Sunday.
I stepped back towards the kitchen. I glanced out the window above the sink to see how much of the well was covered with snow—already snow had collected on the deck railings and covered the stone well.
But it’s not supposed to snow until tonight.
I finished the oatmeal, unloaded the dishwasher, and made the beds. Each room I entered, I stole a glance out the window. A few times I caught the snow at a pause and smiled to myself that it must be over. But when I checked in the next room, I’d see it falling again. By mid morning, as I stirred muffin batter, I came to terms with the reality that the snow, despite its frequent fits and starts, wasn’t waiting until the evening. Our agenda for the day was soon paused and shortly canceled.
The weather, as it often does, changed its course. Though it showed signs of doing one thing, it decided to do another. It can’t be bridled, it can’t be fully known. As much as our tiny hands wish to control it with knowledge and predictions, we know deep down we can’t. Every weather prediction has an unseen shrug of “but who knows?” behind it.
I like patterns, predictability, and fixed plans. And what causes my teeth to clench about winter in Canada is the unknown and the need for flexible schedules. My schedules become dotted with ifs during these snowy months. If it snows… if there’s a blizzard… if we can’t get out of our driveway… if the doorknob is frozen…
Knowing there was a storm gathering, I had prepared myself to some extent for this reality (though I made the poor decision to not prepare my three-year-old). I still gritted my teeth.
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I’ve known for a long time that I don’t like change. Over the past few years, I’ve recognized my unhealthy grasping for control over people, weather, health, and other realities I can’t possibly sway to my liking. But it wasn’t until the past year or so that I reckoned how much changes of mind rattled me—both in others and in myself. I’m shaken by someone’s change in perspective or opinion, when they put aside beliefs that they once strongly held, or choose another side to stand on.
Sometimes I grieve this change. I may pace and my heart may flutter wildly like a bird caught in a chimney. Other times I’m angry and fuming. At times I smirk to myself and think, “Ah, they’ve changed their tune,” a phrase I heard often from others when I was young. And, of course, there’s the stifling and pretending that I don’t actually care. I think it affects me this way because I often relate shame and fear with change; when we change our views or stances, it means we didn’t have it right before—or we did, and now we’re heading down a wrong path.
While there is a reality in which we should always tread with care that we’re not forfeiting the essential doctrines of historic Christianity, I’m learning to welcome change with less shame. Though I strive for Christlikeness, there are aspects of his deity that I can’t reach and shouldn’t strive to. I’m not immutable, and to strive to be or expect that of others is idolatry. I’m about to turn twenty-five—a quarter of a century, as my husband teases. I’m still figuring a lot out. It’s okay that I don’t have a firm position on everything, and it’s okay that I’ve changed my mind over the years—and, honestly, I will again in the future.
I don’t want to be like the people the Apostle Paul described who are “tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes,” (Eph. 4:14 ESV). I don’t want to change my theology to whatever feels good, happens to be trending, appears more convenient, or makes me popular. I want to carefully search Scripture to be sure that what I believe is biblical. But I also don’t want to hold so tightly to secondary and tertiary issues, especially ones that aren’t so clear, that I’m unwilling to change even when proven another argument is stronger.
Change gives me anxiety. I fear the unknown. I fear being wrong—either in the past or in the future. I fear what it will mean if someone I respect or love changes their positions. But I want to faithfully love my siblings in Christ, no matter their disagreements with me. I want to be faithful to God’s Word, which may mean searching and studying and changing yet again. And I’m striving to have grace and compassion for that—towards others and myself.
Lore Ferguson Wilbert’s writing—both the beauty of it and the words themselves—challenge me as a writer and believer. Her most recent articles inspired some of these thoughts.¹ I think her words capture the place I’m crawling towards:
Winter, in particular, has me thinking about what I’ve learned and what I wish I’d learned sooner. It also has me growing in grace for the girl I was and the woman I became and the people others were and became around me. We learn by experience, by embodied practices, by doing and undoing and doing again and again. We don’t know what we don’t know and sometimes, even if we do know, we don’t have the margin or the funds or the resources to do what we know we should do. And in those moments, I’m learning, what I want is grace and what I need is love, and what I want to give is both and a lot of them to everyone I meet.²
Rather than the anger that boils in me or the snide remark, “Ah, they’ve changed their tune,” I want to be curious and kind—both to myself and others. I want to applaud the hard work they’re doing. I want to honour the pain it took them to get here. We’re just immutable creatures, striving to be faithful with what we have and what we know. I want to have compassion for that.
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Lore Ferguson Wilbert, “We Sing of Snow,” Sayable, January 28, 2022, https://www.sayable.net/blog/2022/1/28/we-sing-of-snow
