New Life Begins
We moved to Olney in the last week of summer when Sawyer was five years old. That year, at the first home football game of the season and before he fell asleep on my lap, he declared that it had been the best day of his “new life.” He talked a lot about his “new life” versus his “old life,” which I found quite interesting and deep for a five-year-old person at the time. The fact was that this change, this move, this new school experience and this separation-from-Mama world was so dramatic and so different that it seemed he couldn’t think of any other way to describe it except that was then (two weeks ago) and this was now. A whole new thing.
Thankfully, he loved his new life. If he were miserable in this different existence, I would have been ten times more miserable than him. I once heard someone say that a mother is only as happy as her saddest child. I think that is 100% true. But, praise God, he was (and is) happy, so I was (and am) happy, too.
The more Sawyer talked about this new life in those days, the more I stopped to consider how much had really changed. The truth is that Sawyer had experienced more change than anyone else in the family. His life was truly radically different. He didn’t see the same people or go to the same places. He didn’t stay home with Emerald and me anymore, he didn’t play alone, he didn’t sleep as much, he didn’t eat the same food, he didn’t think the same way. He was a new man, so to speak. I watched him confidently stride into the cafeteria at school, coolly walking up to new friends and striking up conversations. I watched him drag himself out of bed in the mornings as he adjusted to the new schedule. I listened to his stories about kids at school, and I honestly couldn’t tell if they were true or imagined. I heard him remind Adelade of the library rules, much to her annoyance. He was changed. He was flourishing. And before all of these changes took place, he had no idea that all this world was out there. He was happily playing at home while all this fun and greatness was going on. He didn’t even know what he was missing.
Every time he would talk about his new life, my brain would immediately recall a verse that I learned as a child. 2 Corinthians 5:17: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, and see, the new has come!”
Yes, see it. Because when we come to know Christ, everyone is looking at our new lives, at our commitment to the One who saved us. At the ways that we have changed, and the new approach we take to everything. What we do and say and our attitudes and even our thoughts really do matter. We should have a new life, as new and as radically different as Sawyer’s was at five years old – not because we moved to a new town or started school or got new friends, but because Christ is real and alive and is working in our lives. People should be able to look at us and say, “Yes, I see it. I see the difference. I see Christ.”
This is just another way that living with the children God gave me has convicted my spirit, spoken to my soul, and burned truth into my heart through all these years. Sawyer’s new life then wasn’t about His Savior yet. But it was a reminder that my new life in Christ should be just as dramatically different. I am new.
Does it show? I hope so. This is where new life begins: in the heart of a Savior who offers us a dramatically different way to live. This is real. This is new. This changes us forever.