Gentleness is the best companion

Back in January, someone at a holiday party told me my New Year’s resolutions were just a theologically poor substitute for the practice of Lent. Because I have never attended a church or been part of a family that encouraged Lent observance, I knew no words with which to deflect his strong opinion. I only knew that I felt the blow very personally and didn’t want to get stuck in the crosshairs of an ecclesiastical debate. I was at a party, for heaven’s sake. And I have already had enough such debates to last me a lifetime.

Just days before the party, I had scrawled my resolutions list onto a half page of my diary. I took it seriously. More than anything, my list reflected the year I was leaving behind—a year in which my body was still recovering from the stress of college, and in which I had planned my wedding. Both circumstances left me somewhat fragile, clambering for health, life, real food, exercise, meaningful human contact, and genuine enjoyment. To me, my New Year’s resolutions list was not a statement of ecclesiastical preference so much as a deeply personal expression of my hopes. My list read:

But my attachment to my selected resolutions did not fully explain my anger when the man at the party decried them. Really, I disliked having to stand there by a table saying nothing and looking down at the cookies because I wasn’t the theological big kid on the block.

At one point in my life, I was that big kid—a bully. I loved to debate, argue, draw diagrams explaining my opponent’s mistakes, and generally walk around with steam coming out my ears. But now that I’ve lived a little longer I realize that changing conviction attends the Christian lifelong. And gentleness—not fury, diagrams, or argument—makes the best companion.

Recently, a friend I grew up with in New York came to visit me in Virginia. We have both come a long way from where we began, in the same backwoods church where people shared the same firm, if not sophisticated, convictions about how theology worked.

“The place we grew up is impoverished,” she said, “economically, intellectually, and spiritually.”

I couldn’t help agreeing.

“How can it be,” I asked her, “that we lived in such a poor place and had such rich lives?”

The answer, of course, is that we had more in common with the people around us than we ever wanted to believe. They were not our opponents. They were part of us. The same is true of the man who offended me at the party. If anyone should be patient with him, it’s me.