On Love and Change
By Rachael Gieger
I’ve spent the past three weeks settling into a new room in a new city. Anyone who is reading this who has done (or is currently in the process of doing) the post-grad transition knows what I mean—the settling in takes time. I’ve reflected a lot lately on what makes a space truly yours, truly feel like home. A new friend of mine articulated it a couple weeks ago as I helped him move: he said every time he comes into an unfamiliar living space, he has to rearrange everything in order to make it his own. His statement was simple, but it got me thinking.
This past year has been one of deep change in my heart, life, and personality. Some of these changes are obvious, and some of them are ones that only God and I could ever truly know. I had a plan for myself a year ago, and almost none of it came about...better things took its place. Relatable, right?
I’ve watched my plans, certain traits of mine, and even ways I’ve always seen the world get uprooted and rearranged in ways I could never have imagined. I thought love would be different, this year would be different. Sometimes this rearrangement has hurt, sometimes I’ve questioned if it’s even good. I liked where I had everything, for the most part. But I let someone into my house, my room, and allowing them to settle into it demands that rearrangement.
Right as I was moving into the new room I currently find myself in, the Gospels were speaking of the concept of dwelling places. Jesus says in John 14:2: “In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If there were not, would I have told you that I am going to prepare a place for you?”
The word used in this verse in Greek is monai, which translates as “mansion” or “room.” It’s used only one other time in the Gospel, in John 14:23: “Jesus answered and said to him, ‘Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him.’” Here the word is a variant, monen, and it’s translated as “dwelling” or “home.” A priest I love pointed out this connection—that Jesus sends the Spirit to prepare us as the dwelling place. We, our very souls, are His monai, one of the many rooms in the Father’s house that He chooses to make His home in. However, if this is true—if we choose to love Him—we have to be rearranged in order to be made His own.
I’ve often heard that if the love you’re experiencing is real, then you don’t have to change—you can completely be yourself, always. Part of this is true—there should be a comfort, peace, and acceptance in love, but we’re fooling ourselves if we think that we can always “be ourselves,” because we don’t even know who our real selves are yet.
We have yet to be made into the perfect dwelling place, we have yet to let Love Himself completely rearrange us. Real love—human or divine—if you let it through the door, inevitably has to change you. Sometimes it’s glorious, sometimes it sucks because you thought the bed belonged over there, and the color on the walls was just fine, thank you very much.
But Love knows better.
He knows the work that needs to be done. There’s potential in the four walls of your heart that only He sees. He’ll throw things out that you thought you needed to keep, fill in cracks that you never noticed. He may dim the light on some of your confidence, increase your quietness, bring your gentleness to the forefront and let some of your strength be stored in the back of the closet for a bit. The changes may confuse you, but they’re good, because they’re His. It may be a rearrangement directly from Him, or at the hands of another that’s meant to dwell in your heart. Either way, He will change nothing that shouldn’t be changed.
Such is the terrifyingly beautiful reality of love: in order to fulfill that desire for the fullness of life, being totally oneself, you have to agree that you’re not totally yourself yet at all. It requires you to admit that change is inevitable and trust that it’s only the change that is right, even if it’s not what you had in mind. Your heart has to be remade, rearranged, settled into—by God and for a number of us, man—and only once He has settled in, can you truly settle in too.
“Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on; you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make any sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of - throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were being made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.” —C.S. Lewis
