This is the story I read the morning I stepped out on my deck and screamed.
I am a child and it is nearly Christmas. I stand on a kitchen chair pummeling cookie dough with a rolling pin. I wallop the bag of flour right off the counter and it explodes in a cloud of white dust. I do not move, waiting for my mother's reaction. "What's your favorite cookie shape?" she asks. I find my voice. "A star." Smiling, she hands me the tin cutter. "Make lots of stars while I clean up," she says. -Sue Monk Kidd, Firstlight
This story seared my conscience. How I've shamed and belittled my children for much less than a flour bomb.
Later that morning, I stepped into the lovely dappled light on our deck and looked down. Then looked again. Then let my eyes trail down the steps and across the lower level. Then hurried down to look across the length of the deck. The deck that we built last year. The NEW deck. Then I screamed through clenched teeth.
From one corner to the other, up the stairs, and across the top level, were splatters of dark red stain, like the drips across the driveway from a sprinkler-soaked child. For a moment I thought someone with a severed limb had run to the kitchen, but no, it was not blood that stained our blond wood. It was, indeed, stain. The color of the newly stained playset.
I saw the can of stain and the paint pan neatly placed on the rocks where they should have been. And then it dawned on me. The sponge brush was tucked in its Ziploc bag in the refrigerator, waiting to be used for final touches on the playset. Someone who shall remain nameless did not realize how drippy a stain-drenched paintbrush is when carried from playset to kitchen. Gulp.
I had a choice to make. Somewhere in my brain was an arsenal of shame-based words that no parenting book ever had to teach me. But those go-to words had been covered over during my early morning quiet time by a story of a wise and tender mother who chose the path of love and grace.
I went inside and drank some more coffee and washed up the morning dishes. Then I took my beautiful gift of a child onto the deck and said, "We're going to figure out how to clean this up the best we can. You can help."
"I'm sorry, Mom. I didn't know. I'll help."
Riddle: what singular thing can bring us great benefit and massive discouragement? Well, it's all in the semantics. Great benefit: emulating a person and family you admire, otherwise known as role modeling. Massive discouragement: comparing yourself to a person or family you envy, otherwise known as idol worshipping.
My husband and I had a discussion about this last night over burgers and fries at Newts. I wanted to pick his brain on which men in his life he admires and seeks to emulate. He wanted to eat his burger and keep abreast of the 49ers/Patriots score. But he humored me and mentioned a couple of names, pointed to some parenting classes we've taken, and praised the fact that we are a tight team when it comes to guiding our family.
"Do you ever get down on yourself because you're not more like so-and-so?" I probed.
"Nope."
"Oh."
Maybe it's a female thing. Maybe we more easily turn role models into idols. All I know is that I have to be extremely careful in this area. In the Bible, which is my instruction manual, there is no step-by-step recipe on how to do life and raise a family. God has provided the ingredients of my family in one big, handsome face, one quickly-wrinkling, almost 40-year-old mug, and 3 sweet, ever-morphing faces. He says, "Child, this is My provision for you. There are a million fine ways cook. Just trust Me, and I will be your guide and soothe your worries."
What happens when there are too many cooks in my mental kitchen?
It leads me to think things like: why don't I have her ingredients? How come I can't have a kitchen like theirs? How do they cook with a well-developed recipe, while I just cook with a pinch of this and a palm of that? How did they get nice, brown bread while mine is burned on the bottom?
Suddenly, my mind hits fast-forward through the Food Network. Do it like this! Do it like that! Stir the pan! Put on the lid! Take off the lid! Turn up the heat! No, turn it down! Follow the recipe! Throw out the recipe! Oh, look at his perfect turkey. Oh, look at her beautiful cake.
Stop. STOP! Turn it off. We are the Pearsons. God loves even the worst things about us, because they keep us humble and seeking Him. God loves the best things about us because they make Him look good.
Now, I think I'll go join my family for our own little breakfast in our own little kitchen, even if someone burns the toast.
I once had a piano student write her name in the dust on my piano. That proves how much I hate to dust. I nearly grumble at sunny days when the light presumes to cast it's filmy glow on my furniture. My neighbor girl said our house smells like dusty perfume. I told her, "I'm not sure about the perfume part."
Really, dusting is so low on my priority list that it has to jump up and down and wave wildly to get done. Or my mother-in-law has to visit. Or I have to host a party of not-that-close friends.
Do not blame my mother for this. She keeps a very tidy home and did her best to teach me how to use a dust cloth. Blame the 1000 other things I'd rather be doing. Like blogging...or staring out the window.
Christ said of the Pharisees in Matthew 23,
They talk a good line, but they don't live it. They don't take it into their hearts and live it out in their behavior. It's all spit-and-polish veneer.
For some reason, reading this makes me think of dust. More accurately, how my dusty house reperesents a change in me.
I spent the first part of my life with a spit and polish veneer. If I got straight As, if people could see how talented I was, if I could get everything just right, I would feel worthy. I was loud about my victories and quiet about my vices. Actually, I tried to pretend my vices weren't there, or didn't matter. "Sin" was an antiquated, religious word that just ladened people with unneccessary baggage.
When I accepted the truth of Christ in college, it wasn't because I suddenly became aware of my sin. For me, believing in God answered deep-seated questions. I understood on a theoretical level that the gap between God and me existed because of sin, and that Christ bridged the gap, but I had not truly embraced my own contribution to that gap.
Scour the insides, and the gleaming surface will mean something. -Jesus' plea to the Pharisees, Matthew 23
Years of God's grip on my heart has squeezed out the truth. I am dust. I am the "chief of sinners." Well, Paul called himself that, and so did John Bunyan, but I beg to differ. It is I.
God has a beautiful, compelling standard for pure loving and righteous living, and I fall woefully short.
Example 1: Yesterday, one of my piano students was accompanied by her grandma, who had never been to my home, and all I could think was, "Oh no, my house is a mess. What will she think?" I was relieved when she didn't come inside.
Examples 2-4: I say nice things to people even while my mind is judging them. Christ called those kind of words a "clashing cymbal."
I pray that God uses me as an instrument of His love and then fret over some note I played wrong on the piano at a concert.
I ask God for wisdom in parenting and then let the kids watch 3 hours of T.V.
Examples 5-a million: meet me for coffee and we'll talk.
The funny thing is...and this faith is full of strange twists...that the more I face and confess, rather than preen and polish, the more usable I am in God's kingdom; the more His power can scour.
Thankfully, grace, that thing we call amazing, is a transparent covering over all our foibles and faults... not unlike a layer of dust.
