Most of you who know me well know that I am not fond of
showers. They are annoying, a waste of time, energy, and water. You are never
done with them. No matter how much soap or how long you are in there you will
always have to take another one. It is a never ending task that continues the
rest of your life. How depressing!! Maybe this better explains my personality,
I like things to be done and finished so I can move on…and showers never
satisfy this desire.
As I was driving home
recently I considered that I should probably take one before going to work in
the morning. This thought started the
little battle inside my head wanting to revolt against society. “Who needs
showers? Don’t we have natural oils that
clean us? I am not that stinky am I? Think of all the water and soap I will
save if I don’t! Too bad I will probably be shunned…man, America is so picky�
(I think I went on for 5 minutes but I will spare you the details of trying to
talk myself out of taking a shower):). Then I started to think about how this is
similar with my desire to be perfect.
For way too much of my life I have strived to be perfect. I
hate messing up, disappointing people, and struggling with the same things over
and over. I just want to get it right and move on, be done with making
mistakes. As we all know this is impossible, but yet I still strived for this.
I hate continually repeating the same sin, and not getting over it. This leads
to great frustration. It irks me this whole life I will always mess up, always
struggle and never just be perfect. But after thinking about how I just need to
suck it up and take a shower; I realized how over the past year God has made me
more content with my unclean self. Don’t get me wrong, I still desire to be
perfect but it is for a different reason now. Before I wanted to be done
working so hard, to be done with feeling like I kept disappointing God or my
parents, to be done feeling guilty when I messed up,or prideful because I
actually got it right. But I am slowly realizing how “wonderful “it is to be at
peace with my imperfect self. I have been trying to walk the walk by myself,
forgetting and not understanding how to really rely on God (John 15:5). He knows
I’m not perfect, that is no surprise to Him.
Since I was a little girl I have been familiar with the truth “That
while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.�
He didn’t wait for us to clean up our act to sacrifice His life for us.
He wants to walk this hard life with me, or even carry me at times. (Matthew
11:28) I always heard if I was capable
of being perfect I wouldn’t see my need for God… I’d think to myself “yeah,
yeah, yeah, I would still want to be with Him�, but honestly would I? Because
of my imperfections I get to feel and experience more of God’s grace and love
in ways I would have never imagined. If I was perfect I would not understand
the great compassion He has for me, His patience, His tender heart, His mercy,
His devotion…I could go on. If I did not mess up I would not know my need for
God, now that would be tragic!
Now, like the
apostle, Paul, says this does not give me an excuse to be evil and
self-centered just because I can, but gives me the freedom to be honest with
myself and relieves me of the burden of having to try to win His affections by
striving to be perfect.… Now here is the irony that I have trouble wrapping my
head around…..Jesus has offered to me
His perfection, His total righteousness, BECAUSE I cannot achieve it
myself, but it is a gift of love from Him that I can receive.. So the crazy
thing of this all is that I have been freed from striving, Jesus has fulfilled
for me what I cannot do. Why wouldn’t I gladly receive a deal like that? Whew,
that was long!
As I drove into the driveway I realized that, yes this would
be another one of the thousands of showers that I would have to take but I get
to experience once again the freshness of washing away all the scum that has accumulated on me throughout the day. (I do
enjoy being clean) In the spiritual
sense, I get to feel the cleansing of Jesus washing the grime of my ugliness
everyday and His willingness to do it over and over again even though it is
going to happen again tomorrow. I am humbled again to realize why I so
desperately need Him.
PS This still does not stop me from being super excited
about the possibility of not showering as much on the WR! Training is in 5 days and there for sure is a
lack of showering that takes place there. Now that you are completely grossed
out let’s remember we all have our weaknesses some are just smellier than
others :). Sorry teammates.
