too small
The leaves have begun to turn, that’s what we call it, a turning, and not just toward a vibrant end, but also toward the promise of new life. Nature presents her story year after year, the echo of her longing like a comfort, like the soft murmur that serves as the heartbeat of praise, the wise, creative force of God embedded in the fabric of His world, His chokmah, that says, See! This is how the whole thing goes.
Seasons turn; hearts turn; lives turn; progress turns. People turn and are healed, the Word says. We only see it clearly from the other side, when the thing has really already happened. Greens bleed into orange and yellow and red as if a stunning, holy fire engulfs the trees, and they are changed but not destroyed. There’s no going back, only a new beginning. This transition we have long anticipated feels sudden, as though it happened in the blink of an eye, because so much of it happened long ago, in places hidden from plain sight. But then, our faith is in what is unseen, because what is seen is temporary.
With our eyes alive with the color outside, our family has been preparing, as people have always done, just in the context and ways of our time and place in the world. Last weekend, I hauled down a few boxes of Autumn decorations, draped soft blankets on the chairs and the beds. Darkness now inevitably comes crisp and chilly. I have been thinking about soups simmering on the stove and tasting pumpkin-spiced things, and we have been cleaning out our closets and drawers.
From downstairs in the kitchen where I now stand cutting sweet potatoes into chunks for roasting, I hear Riley narrating as she tugs another t-shirt over her head, something about, “short-sleeved t-shirt #4,” and “alright,” and “I think that’s all done now.” Her words have a cadence like she’s half singing, half chanting them, but really, it’s just a rhythm of the sort we all impose on our transitions to make them feel a little less daunting. If I can make something routine, give it a comfortable sound, I can convince myself I have some control. I hear Riley’s feet, softly continuing that beat as she makes her way downstairs to show me.
“Ookay,” Riley says officially, planting a solid stance in the middle of the kitchen, holding her hands awkwardly at her sides. “This is short-sleeved shirt #4.”
I glance up from the cutting board and the silver bowl beside me slowly filling with delicious cinnabar, the knife I hold in one hand flashing.
In Scripture, God uses so many metaphors to talk about change—pruning, refining, repentance, sanctification, re-creation, re-new-al—more, all diversely implemented by way of altars and a crucifying cross, holy fire, a Word-shaped blade, the Father’s own hands, the Spirit’s power, more–because transformation is His natural occupation, and His variety in communication is a kindness to mortal minds grappling to understand His will and work. He is a heart surgeon. To turn, in a Biblical sense, is to come to Him and place our selves in His hands.
“That shirt looks a little too small,” I say, wondering if Riley will balk because the t-shirt has taken some mismatched place, if she’s attached.
From the beginning, ever since Adam’s and Eve’s sin and the leaves God sewed together in the garden, we humans have longed to be clothed, and all this time since, God’s been calling out where are you and re-turn to me, wanting to cover us over with His love, to robe us in Himself. Clothes in scripture are never just clothes. One way or another, what we wear shows how we identify ourselves and where we’ve grown attached.
I think of Jonathan holding out his royal robes to David, of Ezekiel’s new temple vision of a priest receiving a holy dressing down before a holy dressing up. I think of how the Old Testament priests had to change their outfits before meeting God in the Most Holy Place, and I think of Jesus in His new-age sermon about life in the Spirit urging not to worry what we’ll wear because God Himself will keep us clothed.
I think of new clothes for new seasons and new people, watching Riley turn her body so I can see what she’s wearing from every side, and suddenly, I am in awe of how I got to exchange my old self for glory. I wonder what Christ would have said if the risen Lazarus refused to remove his grave clothes the way I sometimes want to hang on to the lived-in uniform of my old life. Put on the new self, created after the likeness of God, Paul urges, because once He’s made you new, nothing else fits.
Riley beams at me, laughs right out loud over my assessment of her too-small t-shirt.
“Give away pile,” she says, spilling joy, throwing her finger in the air to put a point on it.
Swiftly, and that itself a miracle because Riley does most everything deliberately slow, she turns on her heel and marches back toward the stairs, on her way to put on something else. I know I will find that ill-fitting shirt tossed aside in a giveaway pile, instantly forgotten.
Would that I could so easily toss aside my old self-ish ways.
I listen to Riley’s feet pad that old beat out on the stairs—See! This is how the whole thing goes.
This, again, is The Story, first the turn toward a vibrant refining, and then, that stunning spill of joy over letting go, and the new life replacing the old. Paul encouraged, “let us lay aside the sin that clings closely”, and I wonder could I, in the moment, choose to toss aside the things that would keep me bound because I see clearly how He’s already covered me new with Himself?
I hear Riley upstairs again, murmuring something about “t-shirt #5,” and I recognize how submitting to the Refiner’s fire really works like a perpetual fitting and redressing, how over and over, I yank my way into some suffocating old sinful preoccupation, and stand before Father God in our holy home, and He looks at me with that love and says, “No no, that’s too small for you.”
I smile now, imagining myself bubbling over with Riley-sized joy as, in agreement, I toss that old ragged thing in the fire, forgetting it forever, turning again toward everything new, and then I hear Riley’s feet again on the stairs.
