Heart Writing

Transparency is needed.

I think I hide behind my masks pretending everything is okay because I think everyone else has it all together.

But the truth is: I don’t have all together.

And even more freeing: I’m pretty sure no one else has it all together either.

So here’s a little transparency this morning to make you feel like you’re not the only one with a messy heart or room.

This is the state of my living room 94% of the time (5% it’s probably worse and the other 1% the toys might end up in the bins)

This is the state of my family room 92%  of the time (the other 8% of the time I don’t have a finished quilt lying out waiting for me to purchase batting because the piece I have isn’t nearly big enough)

This is the state of my sewing area 99.8% of the time.

As a bonus: I had to search the house for my camera to take these shots.  I hid it from the twins on top of the couch and the couch ate it.

One final confession: without transparency and humility before the throne of grace,  100% of the time my messy heart would be so much worse than any area of my home.

Some conversations can change you forever.

I don’t even remember who said it though I can narrow it down to two people.
I remember ranting, crying, bemoaning my relationship with these people.
I just didn’t understand.
Maybe that’s an understatement.
She looked at me (whoever she was) and said firmly:

“God put these people in your life.  You would not be who you are today without them.”

I was silenced.

For weeks, actually.

Silenced again recently.

You see, it’s not about these people.
It’s not about the heartaches or the fights or the pain caused by thoughtless words. 

It’s bigger than that.
These questions of why, the disobediences to direct commands, they are not only seeking the wrong answers,

They are the wrong questions.

What we’re really asking is:

Do I believe that God is sovereign?
Do I believe that God is good?

When I tell my daughters not to play in the cabinet under the sink and they look at me and disobey:
they don’t understand that I know more than them and they don’t believe that in keeping them from what they want to play with I am doing them good.

Woe to me, who is old enough to understand that when God asks obedience to Him it is because he knows more than me (and controls it all!) and He wants good for me. 

And those last 6 commands they show in how I treat people how well I am answering those questions:
Do I believe God is sovereign?
Do I believe God is good?

4. Honor you father and your mother.  Because when I do not give them honor, I reject that He used these people to mold me.  I say that they were not a good gift.  I say that God made a mistake when He gave me to them.
5. You shall not murder (even in your thoughts).  Because when I devalue those whom He has made I am saying that He made something not good.  That the person is not made in His Image.
6. You shall not commit adultery (even in your thoughts).  Because when I defame the marriage bed, I am saying that His Sovereign plan of one man for one woman is wrong.
7. You shall not steal.  Because when I take something, I am saying that my God does not give me what I need and that the gifts he has given me are not good.
8. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.  Because when I gossip, I defame someone made in His good image. Because when I lie, I say that Truth is not the ruling Power.
9. You shall not covet your neighbors wife.  Because when I say that my friends’ husband is better than mine, I am saying that God didn’t know what He was doing when he knit my spouse to me.  I am saying that my spouse is not a good gift.
10. You shall not covet anything that belongs to someone else.  Because when I say that what they have is better than what has been given to me, I am actually saying the God owes me something better.  I am saying that His current plan for me is not good.

Is God sovereign?
Is God good?

Is the God who said He is first, who said not to make idols, who said to keep His name holy, and gave us a Sabbath because we are not sovereign, because we grow weary when He does not….

Is He who He says He is?
Is God Sovereign?
Is God Good?

I love this exchange in C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe because it precisely illustrates this tension:

“‘Is – is he a man?’ asked Lucy. ‘Aslan a man!’ said Mr. Beaver sternly. ‘Certainly not. I tell you he is the King of the wood and the son of the great Emperor-Beyond-the-Sea. Don’t you know who is the King of Beasts? Aslan is a lion, the Lion, the great Lion.’ ‘Ooh,’ said Susan, ‘I thought he was a man. Is he – quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.’ ‘That you will, dearie, and make no mistake,’ said Mrs. Beaver; ‘if there’s anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they’re either braver than most or else just silly.’ ‘Then he isn’t safe?’ said Lucy. ‘Safe?’ said Mr. Beaver; ‘don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the king I tell you’.”

‘Course He isn’t safe.  But He’s good.  He’s the King I tell you.

A King who tirelessly weaves the mistakes of sinful people for good, even when those mistakes cause pain.  Even when we don’t understand.

‘Course He isn’t safe.  But He’s good.

He’s the King I tell you.

I’m sitting in this chair typing away when I feel the welcome warmth of a baby’s head rests on my hip.  Her little thumb tucked in her mouth, she looks at me asking to be held.

Her sweet sister toddles up with and empty straw cup from breakfast.  She wants me to fill it.

We all collapse on the floor: a snuggly mess of limbs.

And I inhale sharply.

What faith they girls have in me.

Do I have that same faith?

When I am tired and needing rest, do I lay my head in my Father’s lap for comfort?

When I am worn and dry, do I come to the Living Water to drink?

I soak in this picture of faith in their little lives, and I come running to Him.

Scars are funny things; reminders of wounds long healed and battles won… or lost. My body is covered with them: the scar from accidentally cutting myself with a new pocket knife, from jumping on a mattress with springs uncovered, from acne, from chasing a boy, and from walking one foot on the sidewalk, one on the wet grass.

But there are fresh scars too. Scars from rapidly growing babies stretching the skin til it cracks.

A scar from the girls’ chosen exit 4 inches wide and still twinging as it heals.

Excess skin hanging limply, empty of its purpose.

These scars are fresh,

tender.

Often they make me feel weak and pick at different scars; scars of the spirit which have never properly healed because I have never let the One who Heals touch those places.

I grew up in a space that crushed my spirit many times. A place of children teasing: too slow, too fat, too early in the blooming, too smart, too introverted, too nerdy, too tall, too clumsy, too sad, too loud. Was I too much? A place of grow-ups criticizing; never follows through, never small enough, never eating right, never loving right, never neat enough, never close enough, never perfect.  Would I never be enough?

It’s the place where we all grew up: though each one felt it differently.

The place of wounding because others fall.

The place of seeking perfection because that is what we fell from.

Some of these places are softer than other, filled with confessing the falls, the grace extended when we fall ourselves, the celebration of each little triumph. I earnestly pray the place I help create for our daughters will be one that builds up almost as often as it crushes.

My place of crushing was not soft. Was I too much? Would I never be enough? Those answers that I sought, that we all seek, were answered in actions.  So I sought the few places where the answers could sometimes build me up: 
academics,
relationships with boys,
looking normal and sometimes pretty,
maybe even acting the part.
The rest of me was (is) raw; raw with picking at the wounds, raw from seeking validation in the wrong places, raw from not celebrating what was grace-filled and good.

And then these new scars came–the ones from gestating two little people–to tear open some old ones. Will I never be pretty enough? Will I never fit into my old pants? Am I too much, too big, to be loved?  Wounds that need to be healed, all caused from seeking the perfection I’ve all fallen from or the perfection expectations created by the place around me (or the sinner in me).

Not matter how hard I try, I’ll never meet the expectations.

I will never be perfect.

But I am being perfected.

Being perfected when I confess to Him and to them that I am not perfect and that I have failed.

Being perfected when I renew my mind in the Truth.

Being perfected by scars.