Yesterday, my wife and I, along with our youngest daughter, were sitting outside in the coolness of a presummer evening, enjoying the smell of the newly planted flowers along the front walk of our house. Our conversation was centered around plans for the summer, job options for the daughter, graduation plans, etc. Once we started discussing graduation, the reality hit us all over again that our little girl was finished with high school. A major stepping stone in her life had been accomplished. As we sat there reflecting upon that reality—mom and dad a bit wistfully, Charis a bit gleefully—a realization suddenly occurred to Charis. “I don’t feel any different,” she mused, “I’m still just me.”
She didn’t feel like a graduate, is what she meant. The high school student and the post-high school girl felt the same to her. I didn’t ask what she expected. I didn’t ask how she expected she would feel, having completed high school. I didn’t really ask anything, mainly because I understood what she was saying. I’m much older, of course, and have gone through countless “life-changing” moments: graduation, marriage, my first real job, the birth of my children—the list is long, and I can say without hesitation that none of them in themselves produced any noticeable change in how I experienced myself. I was still simply me. Single or married, jobless or employed, childless or a father, I was in all cases still myself. I didn’t feel any different. And yet, here I am years later, married almost thirty-one years, children grown and in college, on my third career—clearly not the same person I was when I started out on this journey. I can’t point to any single moment in time, or any single event, and say here is where I changed. But I can look back over the years and see with absolute certainty that I have changed, I have grown. It’s as if the path of life, with all of its twists and turns, is invisible while you’re on it, but when you get to the end (or at least a long ways down the path) you can turn around and see with near perfect clarity how the events in your life, along with your choices, have shaped you into the person you have become. Charis doesn’t feel any different in this moment, maybe because it’s too new. But she is also not the same young lady who started high school four years ago. Life doesn’t usually happen suddenly, does it? It’s mostly about the steady onward march, and the slow, almost imperceptible progression, that changes us “from glory into glory” over time. We didn’t initiate this process, and we won’t be the ones who complete it, either (Hebrews 12:2). We are the recipients of a grace that changes us day by day and with each passing moment into the likeness of the Father. But that grace has always been more visible to those observing from the outside than it is to those who are on the receiving end. Shortly before I arrived home last evening to sit outside with the ladies, Charis sent me an excited text about a flower we had planted a few days ago: our lily bud openedddddd! and it’s so pretty!!! it opened like just overnight Sure enough, when I got home I saw the bud that had only been a promise the day before was open and beautiful, basking in the warmth of the late afternoon sun. I imagine if we could have asked it, though, it might have shrugged its imaginary shoulders and admitted, “But I don’t feel any different—I’m still just me.” Yes, but what a glorious me it is.
