Last
month was beautiful, challenging, educational, and fun. When we arrived
we found ourselves in a beautiful campus overlooking the Black Sea,
and after Africa we were prepared to sleep in tents or on a concrete
floor somewhere. We were teaching English, speaking at churches, and
doing a lot of construction work for the church there, which also runs a
sort of retreat/resort center for ministers and their families who
need to rest or recover their health.
The workers there seemed to have a lot of the detailed construction
covered and the girls were tasked with a lot of painting and landscaping
work so I was asked to chop wood every day. It was exhausting at first
and after the first two days of wood chopping I began to ask in the
mornings, “So what can I do today?” hoping for a different answer. Every
day my Ukrainian boss answered the same way, “chop wood!”
After a few days of breaking my back on the work I actually started
growing to like it.I got to listen to about 4-5 sermons on the ipod
during the day and got some good prayer time in. The only difficulty was
when the workers would see me make a mistake. Many times they’d walk by
and watch what I was doing and the instant I failed to get a log
quickly and cleanly one of them would come over with a smile, take the
axe and show me “how it’s done”. It got irritating really quickly
because I like to learn things and I knew there was no way I was going
to be as good at log chopping as men who had done it for years. It got
to where I would find other little things to do to look like I was
working when they came around and I’d start chopping wood once they
started walking away. I kept feeling like someone was watching over my
shoulder, waiting for me to fail.
So often in the church it can feel similar. We look at others, or they
look at us, and we’re always aware of this line, this standard that
Christians are supposed to look like, live by and stick to. But none of
us really hits that perfect standard, and when we make a mistake big
enough there’s usually somebody there to let us know how things should
have gone. There’s a myth of perfection in the church that is largely
based on image. That’s the spirit I acted out of when I tried to hide my
inadequacy in axe swinging. If nobody saw it, I didn’t really mess up.
That’s also why so many leaders seem so inhuman in their togetherness.
We don’t get to see them in their
frailty
but we feel like our own is so easily exposed. We need to stop trying
to live by the law, trying to look as if we can make it all perfect and
“right” and start being real with each other. I need men in my life to
be real with me and show me how to fail and stand back up again. Even
seasoned log cutters miss a swing occasionally. Show me how it’s done,
and then love me enough to let me fail and still be accepted.
