“This chair isn’t coming clean,” Kris Tippett said randomly. Our ministry for the day dealt with getting the church ready for the nine hours of services that would commence the next day. We were helping some of the youth set up the sanctuary, which really consisted of a large room of wooden walls and a tin roof. The “pews” if you will, were actually nothing more than those cheap plastic outdoor chairs one would normally buy at walmart. Things have a tendency to get dusty in Kenya, and so after setting the chairs up, according to color, we were asked to “dust” them with dirty rags and cloudy water.
“What do you mean?” I asked Kris and looked over, thinking, “Of course they aren’t, these rags are really just pushing the dirt around.” On her white chair, there was a bunch of little black specks that no amount of Kris’ elbow grease was going to remove.
“There’s just spots all over it,” she replied. “They aren’t coming off.”
In a completely sarcastic way, I said “Maybe it’s just part of the design on that chair. Kind of like a speckled gecko.”
Kris proceeded to laugh out loud, in such a way that made me smile. Kris laughs at me a lot, and I have made it a goal to try to make her laugh this one special way, because I love it so much. “You’re so random, where do you come up with these things?” she said.
I kind of shrug, and we continue in our pointless banter as we finish our work.
Kenya has been harder than I thought it would be. I can’t really explain what it is, but I have felt miserable. At first, I thought it might be because I was missing people from my last team. Then I thought it might be because I wasn’t satisfied with what were doing, and calling it “ministry.” Then I thought maybe, I was just tired of the race. Maybe I am just growing completely weary of “doing” things for God, who I can’t even feel at the moment.
I’ve just been so completely miserable. I’ve never felt so tired before, or slept so much. Last Friday, I slept the whole day away because of sheer emotional exhaustion. I’ve gotten so angry with God lately, because I am here, doing what I think He WANTS me to do, but He has had the audacity to completely withdraw His presence from me.
People talk about how they “Feel” the Holy Spirit when I share. How is that possible, when I felt NOTHING?
Then my computer broke that night. Completely worthless. Now I have a five pound paperweight.
Furious with God and His apparent lack of care for my feelings (at the moment) I went and laid down in my bunk bed and had it out with Him. Not that it was much of an argument really. There were so many things that I cried about that night, complaining and whining about pointless things to God. I told Him I hated Him, for a bunch of different reasons. I told Him I was furious, I was finished, and if He cared at all, He’d just let me die.
How overdramatic.
I slept horribly that night. I wonder if it was my subconscious wrestling with the idea of what my flesh confessed to God. Of course my flesh hates God, because the Spirit that lives inside me is attempting to free me from the filthy claws it has had on me my whole life. I suppose that my Spirit will never be free from my flesh, this side of heaven.
Somewhere in my tossing and turning that night, God shared with me a tiny revelation. He told me how I was that speckled gecko.
What? How does that even make any sense? We joked about how “Speckled Gecko” would make a good blog title, but that’s it. Tell me, God, how am I like a stupid lizard?
God told me, how sometimes I was like that chair. I was so comfortable with the spots and stripes on my soul that I don’t want to be clean. I don’t want to be “mature”, and so I would rather stay dirty and blemished rather than go through the pain it would take to get me clean.
I’ve already told God that I want more of Him. I want ALL He has for me. Whatever that takes. So God has begun to “clean” me, not unlike Eustice in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, where he has become the dragon, and Aslan has to painfully shred away his scales until none of his dragon-like exterior remains.
I felt like that the other night. I felt like God cracked my heart wide open so he could get to the dirtiest part of it to scour it out. I feel like He’s saying: “Kirsten, I know you enjoy the comfort of who you are now, but I want you to grow, I want you to mature, and to do so, you’re going to have to let Me clean you out. I can see what is dirty, and I’m going to get to it, regardless of how painful it seems.”
Uggh. God wants me to be a mature, speckled gecko. Not one that who is content existing in the past glory of who I thought I was.
I woke up the next morning, and was instantly sorry. I told God I didn’t hate Him, and of course, He already knew that. He knew those empty thoughts and words had been buried deep inside my spirit for awhile, and He just needed to push me a little further to get them out. I know He’s changing me from Glory to Glory. I just pray for the strength to endure the shedding of my old skin.
