Our deck still needs to be stained by winter, which is coming fast here in Minnesota. Perry sanded it for me, and it’s been on the to-do list since last fall when my 30 year marriage with a now retired military officer was crumbling, and probably even the fall before that. I had gotten one section finished, front and back, a few weeks back, but then life got busy and it has gone untouched since then. (You can see that finished section behind me in the photo, doesn’t it look good?!)
Today hasn’t gone as planned, and maybe none of them quite do, but I saw my window of time and set out to tackle what I could. Spiders had taken back their territory and needed to be swept away again, my dad stopped by for a quick visit, and the wind was not helping me contain the stain to the fence alone. So, there I stood, a couple of hours after I had started my project of the day, when I realized that I was excited about sharing a picture with Perry of another section finished in the small window of time I had, and I heard in my spirit, “The process is messy, but take joy in every step. I’m not finished yet, but don’t forget what I have promised.”
Staining has been therapeutic over the last few months, and I have had hours and hours to process things and think as I finished the unstained backyard fence that was left untouched when my ex-husband moved out just over a year ago. Leaving my job as a COO in a mental health company in July to focus on healing and figure out what God’s purpose is for my life, I have had the luxury of finding the time to do whatever Holy Spirit calls me to do each and every day along with being a full-time mom to a teenager and a foreign exchange student, spending time with Perry with the goal of building a Godly relationship on a firm foundation that will survive every storm that life throws at us, being a good friend to others, improving my relationship with my parents who are also my neighbors, strengthening my walk with Christ by spending as much time as humanly possible in the Bible, and pouring out my words for healing and to inspire others, along with trying to keep up with yardwork and housework in my big 3100 sq ft house in the country by a lake. (I feel so blessed to have been able to keep my dreamhouse in the divorce!)
On the outside, my life might look what a dream life looks like, except for the traumas, messiness, pain, tears, anger, sadness, grief and confusion underneath. People that only see from the outside likely think either that I’m super lucky to be where I’m at, judge me because I was the one to file for divorce, feel bad for me if they believe my story of what I’ve survived, wonder how and why I don’t have to have a job and can still live in a giant lake house, question my sanity because I am newly bold in Christ, they are just watching me to see what crazy thing that I will write or do next, or maybe they’re so busy and consumed with their own lives that they couldn’t care less about me.
The friends that continue to walk with me in Godly wisdom see a very deep soul, conviction and strength that might just shake the world, and pain that has resulted in humility and compassion that few experience to a greater degree than I do. I treasure those chosen few that see me for who God created me to be, and we celebrate each others’ joys and mourn each others’ pain. They inspire me to keep talking about the goodness and power of Jesus Christ.
But, back to talking about the fence…
As I stained, Christian music played on my bluetooth speaker and my mind floated around. I thought about how far I had come since last fourteen months ago, when I was so devastated with my marriage that I preferred to opt for death. A dreamhouse isn’t a dream anymore when it doesn’t have love, trust, and hope, and I was willing to walk away from it all. So many projects to improve the outside of our home, but not enough work was being done to improve our marriage from the inside out. Our “home” was a giant facade, and the foundation of our lives was crumbling, but I couldn’t do enough to prevent it, to fix it, or to change it.
I thought about the picture that we took of our family just over two years ago on Thanksgiving Day. Oh, I have hated that picture, because it triggers me to think about the pain that was in my heart that day. The photo was a facade of a happy family, with my forced smile hiding my frustration that my ex-husband had returned just in time to eat the big meal that the kids and I had prepared, and I was exhausted after trying to make everything seem normal even though I had no idea where he had disappeared to for hours and hours before we took that photo.
I thought about a picture taken more recently that also triggers pain, one of Perry and I. Although our faces are wearing smiles, at the moment we took that photo, I was so hurt and angry at him that I couldn’t even look at him, and I see deeper into my heart and rejoice in the work we have done since then when I look at that photo.
My deck looks like this photo at this very moment, and I still have a gooey section of stain-covered hair, but I feel good about the hour and a half that I invested in working on the parts that most people won’t see, both within me and on the backside of the deck. It has taken me a lifetime to learn it, and I’m sure that I have many more things to learn, but God doesn’t call us to show the world that Christians look good from the outside.
How can we possibly inspire others to surrender our lives to Christ if it looks like we have everything under control? How can we inspire others to admit their sins and talk through the messy stuff if we gloss over everything and act like we live righteous lives without struggle? How can we reach people in every culture and every walk of life if we judge anyone who doesn’t look like us that walks into our church?
I was such a hypocrite, and I didn’t even realize it. I have judged others, spoken words that I knew were truth but that I wasn’t willing to live out myself, and I have said that I can’t tell a lie without realizing that I was actually living a lie because I refused to let people in to see my messy story.
Holy Spirit conviction is heavy, because I now understand that God truly wants us to find joy in the mundane, commit to invest in the unseen, and to show the world that this is not our home. We are each a walking testimony to our Creator that made us, and most of us, even those who profess to be Christians, are not living in the freedom that God offers us. He never holds back his love, his grace and mercy, his blessings, and his forgiveness, and yet we push him away. Through our actions, we say, “I’ve got this God, I don’t need you yet. I’m in control, and I’m doing the best I can.” What he wants us to say through our actions sounds something like this, “It’s not enough, but I give you all that I am and all that I have. Without you, I am nothing, and with you, I have everything. Pour your love through me to others, I want nothing more than to worship you and to be your hands and feet.”