7 Surrendering Pretense for Patience: Humility

7

Surrendering Pretense

for Patience

Humility

Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.

I’m trying to teach my mind to bear the long, slow growth of the fields and sing of its passing while I wait.

I WAS SITTING IN ENGLISH CLASS, staring down a multiple-choice quiz I hadn’t studied for, and that familiar panic crept in.

That’s when my eyes slid toward my neighbor’s paper—she only had a few questions left, so time was of the essence. And that’s when I felt it: the bracelet on my wrist.

WWJD. What Would Jesus Do?

I sat there, frozen. Do I do what Jesus would do—or do I save my grade?

The WWJD bracelets were a natural outgrowth of the transactional Christianity I was coming out of. For a while they were everywhere, woven in every color, stitched with those four letters. The idea was simple: As long as you had a reminder to act like Christ, you could. Just pause, ask the question, and you’d not only know what Jesus would do—you’d be able to do it.

But that’s not how it worked for me.

The bracelet didn’t give me the strength to act like Jesus. It only reminded me that I should. And in that moment—like so many others—I needed more than a reminder. I needed grace: the power to actually do what Jesus would do.

The WWJD movement traced back to an 1896 novel called In His Steps. In it, the people of a fictional town commit to asking that question before making any decision. It transforms the whole community. For me, though, the effect wasn’t transforming, it was disillusioning. A reminder, again and again, that I couldn’t live up to the Christ life.

I don’t remember if I took my bracelet off that day, or if I kept it on awhile longer, still hoping it might work. But I do remember pulling my sleeve over the bracelet and cutting my eyes just enough to get the answers I needed.

From Trying to Training

Like I said at the beginning of this book, for a long time I thought being a Christian was mostly about trying harder to act like one. Trying to be kind, patient. Trying to do what Jesus would do. But that kind of trying wore me out.

Imitation without transformation is exhausting.

That’s why it was such a relief when I discovered the work of Richard Foster, and the movement he helped birth, Renovaré. For the first time, I felt like someone was naming the real issue behind all my trying. In an interview about the work of Renovaré, Richard once said, “Well, after watching people working with the ideas from Celebration of Discipline for a decade or so, I noticed that . . . people were trying rather than training.”

That was it. I’d been trying—not training.

Trying harder in the moment. Hoping I’d make the right call. Hoping I’d be strong enough. Hoping the bracelet was enough. Again, this kind of Christianity was formulaic. It reduced my life with God to a series of moral choices. Each moment was a test, and my value as a Christian was measured by how well I performed. But Richard and Renovaré showed me a different way. They showed me how to train instead of try. They showed me a whole different approach—not behavior modification, but transformation from the inside out.

Living like Christ wasn’t about trying to muster the fruit of the Spirit in the moment. It was about cultivating a life where the Spirit could grow fruit in me over time.

Again, I thought I was supposed to copy Jesus’ virtues—his gentleness, his temperance, his generosity. But I couldn’t imitate the virtuous outcomes of his life; I had to imitate his practices.

Dallas Willard, also a founding member of Renovaré, said the same thing: “We can become like Christ by doing one thing—by following him in the overall style of life he chose for himself.”

The Long Middle

I’ve been training for two decades now, and I am happy to report that I’ve changed.

I don’t rage as much as I used to. I’ve learned to listen better, even when I don’t agree. I’ve become gentler with my kids. I’ve become less narrow and more open-minded. Some bad habits have fallen away, and some healthy ones have taken root. And underneath it all, there’s a deep current of trust in God’s ultimate goodness. That’s real. That’s transformation.

But if I’m honest, I haven’t changed as much as I expected. Not as fast as I hoped. In many ways, I’m still the same. I still check to see if people notice my accomplishments. I still accumulate more than I need. I still try to control people and outcomes. I still turn to food when pressure builds. And I still wonder: Why is transformation taking so long?

I want to be more like Christ. I want to love like God loves. I’m tired of it feeling like an idea—I want to live it. But the pace is glacial. And that’s one of the marks of the illuminative stage: waiting. It’s the middle season of our transformation. There’s movement, to be sure, but no arrival. The slow ache of becoming, the hunger to be more and not quite there, isn’t just a modern feeling—the early desert Christians wrestled with it too.

Abba Ammonas, who had already become a spiritual elder, was once approached by a young disciple with the same question I was carrying: Why is this taking so long? And instead of giving him a lecture, advice, or a fix, Ammonas told him the truth: “I have spent fourteen years in the desert asking God night and day to grant me the victory over anger.”

Fourteen years—a desert monk—spent in longing—not in victory. When I first read that, I felt both discouraged and strangely hopeful.

Discouraged, because the transformation wasn’t going to come as quickly as I wanted.

But hopeful, because monks aren’t transforming any faster either.

Slow progress, it turns out, isn’t bad, and it isn’t failure—it’s the pace of transformation. I’m still learning that, because the illuminative stage can feel so slow and confusing.

When the slowness sets in, I start trying again. My old transactional mindset comes back, only dressed differently—not with a bracelet but with masks.

There are three I reach for: the Spartan, the Researcher, and the Hermit. Each gives me a quick hit of progress, a way to feel further along than I really am.

Maybe you wear one of these too.

The Spartan. When I get tired of waiting for change, I feel the urge to step in and make it happen—and that’s when I slip on the Spartan mask. I call it Spartan because it draws from that ancient warrior culture that was disciplined, severe, and relentless. The Spartan in me wants results. So I double down: longer fasts, earlier wake times, more prayers. It’s a tactic I thought I left behind in the purgative stage—when effort felt like the answer to everything. But here it is again, impatience dressed up as diligence.

I think I’m afraid that if I don’t push, nothing will happen. Waiting feels like failure. Stillness feels like laziness. So I move, act, strain.

As far as I’m concerned, the Spartan mask is just a new version of the WWJD bracelet; instead of trusting my trying, now I’m trusting my training. I’m trying to force grace.

It’s subtle because it looks like commitment. It sounds like faithfulness. It feels like progress. Plus, I like the way it makes me look. I like the nods. The quiet admiration. The subtle respect when someone hears about how I’m training.

Unfortunately, all of it feeds my pride, the opposite of the humility I need to enter the unitive stage.

The Researcher. The Researcher in me believes the problem for my stalled transformation is a lack of information. That if I just read more, listened more, learned more—I’d break through. The logic is simple: The more I know, the more I grow. So I hoard ideas. Maybe that new bit of information will speed my transformation. Maybe the next discovery will spark a breakthrough. That’s the story I tell myself.

And it’s compelling.

Learning feels productive. It’s also within my control. I can read another book. I can take another course. I can dig into another tradition or practice. Gathering insight feels good. It means I don’t have to feel stuck. I don’t have to face the ache of delay or wonder what that ache might be trying to tell me.

I also like the Researcher mask because it makes me sound further along than I am. It gives me plenty of insight to share, all while feeding my pride and choking whatever little humility I have. It gives the appearance of wisdom—even if I haven’t actually lived the information to any meaningful degree.

And that’s the dangerous part.

The more I collect, the more convincing the mask becomes. I start mistaking knowledge for maturity, ideas about love for love itself. And after a while, I lose track of what I’ve lived and what I’ve read.

I don’t know who I am anymore.

The Hermit. Unlike the Spartan or the Researcher, the Hermit in me doesn’t try harder or gather more information. I just wonder if maybe I’m in the wrong place. Maybe transformation would come faster somewhere else, in a monastery, a new church, with a different spiritual director. I start imagining that Christlikeness is somewhere else.

I like this mask. It tells me that once my kids are older, I’ll have more space for spiritual practices. I’ll finally get to go on those regular silent retreats. I’ll have time to serve more frequently at the soup kitchen downtown. In other words, once I find better soil, I’ll grow faster.

This mask is subtle too, because it emerges as a longing for more.

But really, it feeds my pride and chips away at my humility. This is the pride of independence—the quiet belief that I’d grow faster without the barriers of others, that I could make more progress if I didn’t have to slow down for anyone.

It tells me I have all the right ideas, and that if I were just in a different environment, I’d be transformed by now. It wraps me in a fog of what-ifs and almosts. I start imagining new versions of my life somewhere else. And the more I imagine those other lives, the harder it becomes to embrace the life I’m actually living.

Watering Dead Wood

In the desert, a novice once came to his elder, eager for transformation. The old man handed him a piece of dry wood and gave him a simple instruction: Water it every day until it bears fruit.

Unfortunately, the well was far and the journey was tiring. Day after day, the novice carried water. But nothing changed. No signs of growth. No indication that his labor mattered at all.

And yet, he continued.

For three years he labored, pouring water on what everyone else would have called a waste of time—until one day, the branch blossomed. The elder gathered its fruit and brought it to the other monks, saying, “Take and eat the fruit of obedience.”

If I were that monk, I wonder what I would have been thinking?

At first, maybe, I would’ve felt confident—sure that obedience would lead somewhere, that the elder knew what he was doing. But as the days stretched into weeks, and the weeks into months, doubt would’ve crept in.

Is this really what following Christ looks like?

Am I missing something?

What kind of idiot spends his days watering dead wood?

Maybe I would’ve looked around and seen others engaged in more meaningful work—copying sacred texts, tending crops, preparing meals—while I was just carrying water to a lifeless stick. I know there would’ve been days when I just stood there, staring at that dry branch, asking if this was all a lesson in futility.

But unlike me, the novice kept going. Not because he saw progress, but because he trusted the One who gave him the task. He wasn’t trusting the process, he was trusting the person. And that’s the heart of it.

I reach for my masks when I trust the transformational process more than I trust the person who transforms. As I’ve said throughout this book, it’s the Spirit who transforms us—not the process.

Even so, the process matters. It gives form to our participation—shape and direction to our effort. But it doesn’t have transformational power in and of itself; God does. We’re simply invited to participate in our transformation, like sailors who hoist the sails but never confuse it with summoning the wind.

So yes, we follow Jesus’ steps, take up our crosses, and tend our Rules of Life. But we mustn’t confuse what’s decisive:

Effort is essential; grace is decisive.

Still, even knowing this, I lose my bearings in the middle stage:

The Greatest Power

All of this is hard because it means learning to be patient with the real me—the me behind the masks. The one God is actually transforming. But how do I do that? How do I surrender my pretense for patience? Well, I think it starts with this simple affirmation: God is patient.

And this might be the most surprising thing about God. The One who could have whatever he wants, whenever he wants it—waits. He doesn’t rush our transformation. He doesn’t force it on us, even for our good. St. Augustine put it well, “The greatest power of all belongs to God, and it consists in being patient.”

At first, that sounded strange. I think of power as the ability to act instantly, to make things happen on demand. But God’s power shows up in patience because he knows the truth about what he’s creating: He knows I’ll eventually be transformed. He’s not anxious about it. He’s not impatient. He isn’t trying to hurry the process, because he already sees the finished work. Every other kind of power fades, but patience endures. It keeps loving, keeps trusting, keeps waiting—and in the end, it’s the only power that brings about what it intends.

That’s why Teresa of Ávila could say, “Patience obtains all things.”

Power without patience turns into control. It’s like when I see my child struggling to tie her shoe. I can’t handle the delay, so I reach down, take over, and do it for her. The shoe gets tied, but something in her doesn’t grow. My impatience gets the result, but it spoils the process.

That’s what control does—it gets outcomes without transformation.

But power with patience is different. It waits beside. It helps when asked. It trusts that love’s aim isn’t speed but maturity.

Control says: Change now, because I said so.

Love says: I’ll walk with you while you become who you’re meant to be.

God is comfortable waiting for us to embrace all the transformational path requires. He even lets us wear masks for a while, pretending to be someone else. None of it confounds him. None of it can stop him. What he began, he will complete.

The Maskless Face

Here’s the second affirmation I’m working with: If God can be patient with me, I can be patient with me too.

That’s not resignation, a choice to remain stuck. That’s humility. And it’s one of the deepest transformational movements—becoming at peace with who we actually are, not who we pretend to be. Because becoming comfortable with who we really are is one of the clearest signs that transformation is happening.

Why? Because humility is what’s behind the mask. It’s the real face, the face that doesn’t need to impress or pretend. It’s the person free of illusions.

Humility is the maskless face.

We often think humble people are the ones who’ve finally defeated their sin—people who’ve conquered their vices. But that’s not humility. Every saint would be the first to admit the sins that still cling to them. They see their flaws clearly, but they don’t let those flaws define them. God defines them. They know who they are—his image-bearers, his children.

They don’t pretend to be more than that, and they don’t act like they’re less. They’ve accepted both their dependence and their dignity. And because of that, they can trust the pace of their transformation. As Evelyn Underhill used to remind those who wrote to her for spiritual guidance: “Our spiritual life is His [God’s] affair. It consists in being drawn, at His pace, in His way, to the place where He wants us to be; not the place we fancied for ourselves.”

That shift—resting in his pace—changes everything. I’m writing as if this is easy. It’s not. Patience stretches us. But the more patience we can embrace, the more that patience sets off a domino effect:

Taking off my Spartan mask. So what does it look like to surrender pretense for patience and take off my Spartan mask?

There’s another desert story that helps, a story of a monk that came to visit Ammonas, wearing a mat of scratchy rope instead of clothes—a sign of his intensity. When he arrived, Ammonas said simply: “This is no use to you.”

But the man wouldn’t hear it. He had even more intensity in mind: “Three thoughts occupy me,” he said. “Should I wander the desert? Go to a foreign land where no one knows me? Or shut myself in and eat only every second day?” Ammonas told him to stay where he was, live simply, and eat modestly each day—keeping close to the prayer of the tax collector, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner”—and let that be enough.

Ammonas knew the truth: Intensity is not a sign of virtue. It doesn’t accelerate transformation. It may impress others, but it doesn’t impress God. In the end, it’s of no use. But notice Ammonas didn’t reject effort altogether, he points to a slower path. The path shaped by modest repetition, not heroic striving. Modest practices. Light activity. “Gentle costings,” as Friedrich von Hügel put it, is what we’re after.

But all of this makes me feel like a beginner, like a kid. And that’s the point. Jesus doesn’t call me to be impressive—he calls me to become like a child. And that childlikeness, of course, is just another way of describing the humility that opens the door to union.

Taking off my Researcher mask. What does it look like to surrender the Researcher mask?

It means I stop trying to study my way into change. I give myself permission not to know everything. It means trusting that God is forming me even when I don’t understand how. It means letting questions stay open without needing to solve them right away. But that’s hard. Because I like knowing things. When I’m not constantly learning, I feel a little exposed. A little less—like a child.

And there’s the gift again.

I must decrease, so he can increase. When I let that happen—when I allow myself to be small again—something shifts. My mind relaxes, and my heart begins to listen. Pride gives way to humility, and in that quiet exchange, transformation happens.

Of course, I still read. I still learn. But I’m not using knowledge like a drug—something to numb my ache of becoming. I’m learning not to rush into the next idea. Instead, I’m trying to live a little of what I’ve learned before I move on.

That means reading slowly—sometimes painfully slowly—maybe a single book over three or four months. Circling words I don’t understand. Looking them up. Memorizing them. Practicing them. It’s not efficient, but it’s effective.

That’s the difference.

I’m not binging anymore.

Taking off my Hermit mask. Here’s a final story of a monk who grew restless in his community. He said, “I’ll live by myself, without others to bother me, I’ll be at peace, and my anger will disappear.”

So he left.

But one day, his jug kept tipping over. Once, twice, a third time. In a rage, he smashed it. And in that moment, he saw what solitude had revealed: “Wherever you live, you need effort and patience and above all, God’s help.”

Taking off the Hermit mask means I stop scanning for better soil and start trusting the soil I’ve been given. It means embracing the awkward conversations, the interruptions, the disappointments—not as obstacles to transformation, but as the conditions in which it happens.

This life, not my imagined version of it, is where God is forming me.

This is slow work, moving away from independence toward interdependence.

Interdependence means celebrating my need for others. I’m not self-sufficient, I’m other-sufficient. I need their presence, their perspective, their patience. And they need mine. They need me to show up. To listen. To ask for help. To let myself be seen—even in weakness.

And again, all of this is just another way of describing the way humble people live.

True Humility

“True humility,” Frederick Buechner wrote, “doesn’t consist of thinking ill of yourself but of not thinking of yourself much differently from the way you’d be apt to think of anybody else. It is the capacity for being no more and no less pleased when you play your own hand well than when your opponents do.”

I used to think humility was self-loathing or condemnation or a low self-worth. But that’s pseudo-humility. We don’t become humble by tallying our flaws or broadcasting our failures.

Humility is really self-forgetfulness—the slow fading of self-consciousness until another awareness emerges: other-consciousness. That shift doesn’t erase the self; it reorders it. Humility, then, isn’t about thinking less of ourselves, but about being free from the need to think of ourselves so often. The self is still there, but no longer grasping for attention, no longer demanding to be seen.

By taking off our masks, we’ll notice people around us more clearly. We’ll see beyond their defensive layers, their insecurities, their odd quirks. We’ll see them for who they actually are—image-bearers, infinitely precious and unrepeatable. Yes, the more humility grows within us, the more we will live Saint Paul’s words: “Look not to your own interests but to the interests of others” (Philippians 2:4).

We will rejoice at their joy as if it were our own.

We will weep at their pain as if it were ours.

We will let go of judging.

We will stop measuring.

We will delight to see them doing better than us.

All of this is what surrendering pretense for patience makes possible.

Hidden from Our Eyes

Wherever you are reading right now, pause and look around. Do you see a tree, a plant, or a flower? If so, focus on it for the next twenty seconds. Try not to blink, and let your attention settle. Notice the shape of a leaf, the curve of a branch, the way light touches it. Pay attention to the texture—is it smooth or rough, soft or brittle? Notice the color, the shadows. Is there a bud, a bit of new growth? Watch it slowly, without rushing. Try it for twenty seconds and then come back to the page.

Question: While you were looking—could you see it growing?

No. You couldn’t see it growing. But it was. It’s always growing—you just can’t see it in real time. The change is too slow to register in the moment.

And the same is true for our soul.

To walk the threefold path is to live slow growth. You can’t see it in the moment. You only recognize it later, looking back. Sometimes people tell me, “I don’t feel like I’m changing.” There’s a discouragement in their voice. A weariness. So I ask them to look back: “Think about who you were ten years ago. Have you changed?”

Almost always, they nod.

They think differently. They act differently. They’ve softened in some places. Grown stronger in others. They’re not where they want to be, to be sure—but they’re not where they were either. They’ve changed. It wasn’t sudden. It was quiet. It was slow.

It was transformation.

One practice in my Rule of Life that helps me see this is keeping a daily diary. Nothing elaborate—just a few lines each day, reflecting on what I’m noticing. Most years, I end up with a couple hundred entries. In December, I read all the way through them beginning on January first. Sometimes, even in a single year, I catch glimpses of change I couldn’t see. The further back I go in my diaries, the clearer it becomes: Something has shifted. I’m not the same. I’ve changed.

Humility Draws Us Home

The more I have traveled this road, the more I have come to understand that patience does not mean waiting for something to happen; it means waiting while something is happening that I cannot see.

And that’s what this chapter has been about—learning to trust that transformation is happening and a hidden humility is developing within us. God is at work—even though we can’t name it or feel it in the moment.

And that humility is what opens the way into union.

We can’t manufacture it. But we can learn to make room for it. We can cultivate it by watering dry wood. By living ordinary days. By training instead of trying. By surrendering pretense for patience. By taking off our masks. We can learn to stop trusting the process and trust the person—and as that relationship deepens, humility develops.

Slowly, imperceptibly, it takes root, it grows, and it changes us.

And there’s more. Because humility doesn’t just make us more at ease with ourselves, it makes us more attractive. Not in the way the world defines it, but in a quieter, more magnetic way.

And that marks the beginning of something new—something our hearts have been aching for all along.

This is our entrance into the unitive stage.

In Sum

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