I came across a quote this weekend that I have been thinking about nonstop. It talks a lot about how to love people well, and even how to manage our expectations and experiences with people. Written by Heidi Priebe, it ends “But it is not our job to hold anyone accountable to people they used to be. It is our job to travel with them between each version and to honour what emerges along the way. Sometimes it will be an even more luminescent flame. Sometimes it will be a flicker that disappears and temporarily floods the room with a perfect and necessary darkness.”
How often are our relationships damaged because we hold people up to who they used to be, or who we think they should be? I know even in my own life, who I was at 15, 25, 35 and now at 43 are very different people. There are some things that are the same, and my faith has sure gotten a lot deeper, but at the end of the day, I am not who I was even last year, and I think I am a better person because I have changed.
But, along the way I have lost friendships. People don’t like the me that has emerged from that perfect and necessary darkness into the Emily that they see before them. Does that hurt? Sure. But not changing would have hurt more. I mourn what was lost, but I have dug in deeply to who I am now – a person who loves Jesus and His people; a person that believes in kindness and hope. A person who feels deeply, forgives quickly, and trusts implicitly.
As you become who God has created you to be, you will find people willing to embrace that journey – hold them close! And, as you become who God has created you to be, surround yourself with people who see that in you.