Making Room for Change

One of the wonderful things about being the new person in any setting is that you have an opportunity to make different decisions about who you want to be with the people you meet. It seems like a million lifetimes ago, but I attended a different school each year from sixth grade through eleventh grade, so I understand the freedom that comes with this well. When you are the new person, no one knows your history or has prior experiences with you that color their opinion about who you are. Yet we also have a God-given desire to be known. Sometimes, the people who know us best can have the hardest time setting aside their past experiences and opinions to see how we have grown and changed. They remember our mistakes and the versions of us we have outgrown.

We can see a striking example of how familiarity can shape the way people perceive someone in Matthew, Mark, and Luke as they each recount Jesus returning to His hometown of Nazareth and teaching in the synagogue. The people were astonished by His wisdom, but instead of receiving Him, they began asking, “Is this not the carpenter’s son?”

They knew Jesus and His family, yet they struggled to see beyond what they thought they knew about Him. Jesus observed, “A prophet is not without honor except in his own town and in his own home” (Matthew 13:57). I find myself wondering how their familiarity shaped their expectations and contributed to their failure to receive Him.

Of course, the people of Nazareth were rejecting Jesus as the Messiah, and that is not the same as the ways we sometimes struggle to see the people we love clearly. Still, the story makes me wonder how often our own experiences and expectations shape our understanding of others. Even when we love someone deeply, we can become so accustomed to who they have been that we may not fully recognize who they have become. I have found myself thinking about this most often in my relationship with my children.

When my children were young, there was a beautiful simplicity to motherhood. We spent our days playing, learning, reading bedtime stories, and discovering the world together. As they grew more independent and entered their teenage years, they walked through experiences I wish I could have sheltered them from. Those seasons taught me that loving my children would require something different than it had when they were small.

I had to hold my memories of who they had been while intentionally making room for who they were becoming.

They are still the children I have loved from the beginning, but they have grown into adults with their own wisdom, experiences, and perspectives. It is easy to assume that because I have known them their entire lives, I know them well and know them best. But maintaining those relationships requires intentionality in getting to know one another in each new season of life. Otherwise, we risk drifting apart and missing the blessing of knowing who our children are today.

The little girl who once mixed up the meaning of “phalanges” and “philanthropist” is now a strong, independent, servant leader whose empathy and wisdom often surpass my own. The little boy who played so hard that he regularly fell asleep at the dinner table has grown into a hardworking, generous, and kind man whose integrity I deeply admire.

We carry so many versions of our children in our memories: the baby we held, the child we protected, and the teenager we worried about. But loving them means learning to recognize who they are becoming, not only remembering who they were.

That becomes especially important when the path our children take is different from the one we had hoped for them. For some families, those memories include seasons of conflict, rejection, and pain. In those moments, we can remember that God is still at work and turn to Jesus, who knows the pain of rejection and meets us with compassion. If my children ever strayed, I hope I would respond like the father in Jesus’ parable of the prodigal son. Luke tells us that when the father saw his son “while he was still a long way off,” he felt compassion and ran to him (Luke 15:20). I want to extend that same posture of grace to my children in every season of life.

And after the embrace, the next act of grace is making room for who they have become. That means forgiving past mistakes and hurt, setting aside old expectations, listening with curiosity, and welcoming the person standing before us rather than holding tightly to the child we remember.

When we make room for our children to grow, we may discover blessings we would have otherwise missed. We may see God’s faithfulness in ways we could not have imagined, learn from the wisdom they have gained, and discover a deeper kind of relationship than we knew to hope for.

As I reflect on the people of Nazareth, I am reminded that familiarity is not the same as truly knowing someone. There is always more to learn about the people God has placed in our lives, even those we have loved from the very beginning. Our children, spouses, friends, and brothers and sisters in Christ continue to grow, and I don't want my own assumptions or memories of who they have been to keep me from seeing who they are today.

May we hold our understanding of one another with humility, making room for the ways God continues to work in each of our lives. May we be willing to listen, to extend grace, and to see one another with fresh eyes rather than holding tightly to the past. What a gift it is to keep discovering the people we love, and to recognize the blessings we might have missed if we had stopped looking.