hiding our failures

We live in a world that surrounds us with images and words that tell us what we should be.

You can find tutorials on how to do a messy bun. A messy bun. There is, apparently, a right, and a wrong way to do messy hair.

If you've spent more than five minutes online, you know what happens whenever there is a story about a mom and her kids. Strangers begin to pick apart every aspect of her parenting, all based on a snapshot of her life. How could she let her kids eat that? Why didn't she do something differently? Even the affirming comments seem double edged. I'm so glad there are still moms out there that... Other moms should take a lesson...

There is constant judgement. Constant. And the result is that we are afraid to say or do anything that could result in our imperfections being seen. I mean who here hasn't thought, "Do I dare put that bumper sticker on my car? What if I beep at someone or cut someone off and then they see that sticker?" Want to give someone advice? Better have your ducks in a row. You'd better not write a blog about marriage if you gave your husband a good dose of side eye this morning. And don't even think about writing a parenting blog if your kids aren't perfect. 

Sure, we see the cracks in the logic of these statements, but it most often doesn't embolden us enough to step out of our protective cocoons that we build for ourselves. We keep to ourselves. We keep quiet. We smile and say, "Yeah, that's really hard," but we leave it at that. "Been there, done that...you know, way in the past. I've conquered all that and I've got it all together now and I really don't like to talk about it now." That's the impression we prefer to leave.

You guys, I'm not suggesting that we air out all our dirty laundry. We have a responsibility to protect our families and we are never to gossip. But I can tell you without betraying any confidences that WonderHubs and I, we can fight with the best of 'em. We can say unkind things to each other. We can put up walls of silence. We can just get on each others' nerves. We can be overly sarcastic with each other. We're not the perfect couple, but we love each other. 

Without hanging my kids out to dry, I can tell you that we've had potty training battles, that their rooms are often messy, that we have been through the ringer of medical issues. I can let you know that I too, have a special needs kiddo. I can tell you that we've faced more than the typical teenage drama, and we're not even that far into it. I can tell you that my kids have lied to us, occasionally told us they hate us, accused us of being lame. This list could go on forever, because we're not perfect parents and we don't have perfect kids. We have awesome, imperfect kids and we love them. 

Without being disrespectful, I can tell you that my family of origin, is more than a little whacky. My mom used to chase the bus down in her nightgown, in our minivan, beeping and waving out the window if we were late to school, until the bus pulled over and we all got out and ran up to it, past an entire bus of kids watching us out the windows and then past them again as we searched for seats. My dad chased us around in a gorilla suit and scared the daylights out of us. There was one summer that my mom was so irrationally mad at my dad that she didn't speak for our entire vacation. My dad wore despicably short shorts in the 80s. They struggled through foster care and adoption, illnesses, job loss, the loss of parents and a child. They are crazy and imperfect and a total hoot, and I love them. 

When we open up to vulnerability, when we let others see us fo realz, we open ourselves up to relationships, to growth, to community. It's OK to not be perfect. That's a complete understatement. It's real, the only real, to be not perfect. It's universal to be not perfect. It's preferable to be not perfect (think about how much time you want to spend with someone who legit seems to have it all together). 

It's the recognition of the depth of our own imperfection that brings our need for Jesus into focus. For as much as we want to be perfect, we're not and that's the requirement God sets on entering into His presence. Like a kid too short to ride the rollercoaster, there's nothing we can do about our own lacking. Oh, but Jesus! He took on our punishment and leaving the cover of His own perfection in order to make us enough. He covers the gap between us and the standard. And that is enough. 

In fact, it's more than enough. God finds us in our weakness, allows Jesus to bridge the gaping void of our own sufficiency, and then He gets to work! His power is made perfect in our weakness! Throughout the course of history, God has used people who were epically imperfect. Abraham, Moses, Rahab, Paul, just to name a tiny portion. God didn't use them because they were amaze-balls and they had it all together and did everything right and never had old French fries on the floor of the car. Imperfection, weaknesses, flat out failures...these are the canvases that God does the most with. When we submit our will to His, knowing He is the more capable Creator, He paints our lives into something so much more beautiful than we can when we insist on holding the brush and painting our own stories in our own strength.

So, as the Holy Spirit works in you, as rough edges are sanded down, let's not pretend they're not there. Let's be like Paul, eager to boast in them even, anticipating how God's strength will be displayed in our weakness. Let's walk the road together, let's encourage one another, pick up the pieces for each other, recount God's faithfulness for each other. Let's not allow pride and whatever lies the enemy may tell us to cause us to do things alone that have always been meant to be done together.