Sunday Best

Do you ever walk into a church and have random people look at you like you have just destroyed their whole belief system by your very presence? The look that makes you wonder if you have something on your face? Shirt? In your hair? Then at the next bathroom you see, you dash in to find that you look like you always do? Over-worked, under-paid, and rushed.

I never can figure these people out.

Is it the fact that I come to choir practice straight from work? Usually with something the girls have spilled on my pants? Could it be the fact that I wear tennis shoes or flops instead of heals or slides? Maybe its my tattoos. I think it might be that I haven't brushed my hair for the last 11 hours, but a two year old has! And boy can you tell.

A very dear person to me was talking about how we should present ourselves at church recently and I thought I mostly agreed with him. He said that we should take our appearance at church very seriously because, after all, we are going to the throne of a King. We should polish our faces, put on nice pants, wear suit jackets, and make sure we're more than presentable. We should make sure we're flawless to show respect for our Maker.

I thought I agreed, but tonight, I've changed my mind.

My church growing up used to sing this hymn at invitation "Come just as you are"...what the heck happened to that idea?

I happen to think its a great idea and its just what God wants from us. I doubt very seriously He sees how we're dressed when we come. The Lord Himself said in 1 Samuel 16:7 "Don't judge by his appearance or height, for I have rejected him. The Lord doesn't see things the way you see them. People judge by outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart." Pretty great right?

I love that I can come to church at the end of a very long day when the girls have been up since four and at their winiest and just rest in the fact that my Savior doesn't see what I'm wearing or what my hair looks like or what those spots all over my jeans are. He sees me. He sees my heart. He sees my desire to lift my voice up in praise to His name, the only name worth singing.

I'm not at that church for people who see my outward appearance. I'm there to worship my Savior. And I'm going to be doing it anyway I please, whether it be in hole-y jeans and a spit-up stained shirt or in my Sunday finest.

So you there, lady, you can keep giving me the stink eye every time I show up on Wednesday night looking a little on the trashy side. I may "just" be a nanny, but I work hard! Right up until 6 o'clock every night. So those stains on my pants prove that I'm really getting down into the lives of those two little ones and loving on them fiercely. Those tennis shoes are on to help me walk those girls the mile it takes to get to the park. My hair is little windblown from that walk, but I don't have time to brush it out because twins don't usually let you have those types of luxuries. And those tattoos prove that I've been somewhere...I have a story to tell if only you'd listen. And man is it an incredible story of how God rescued me straight from the hand of the devil! Maybe you'll get to hear it sometime.

And maybe I'll have more tattoos by then.

The Parent Trap

My mom gave me a book to read last night with the instruction that it was one I absolutely had to get through if Paul and I ever planned to be parents. First, can I tell you how shocked I was that my mom was recommending a book to me?! I who have recommended countless books to her who never read one of them??
The audacity of that woman!

But I digress...

During my ritual cup of steaming hot tea this morning, I cracked that book open and delved into the life of Beth Moore via her book Feathers from My Nest. Now, I'm only two chapters in, mind you, but my view on motherhood is already changed.

I had, and still have, the best mother in the world for me. She loved and prayed me through some pretty awful years. She literally sang the night-time little girl fears out of me. She spent hours in my room at night right before bedtime just listening to what my little mind had to say. She nurtured my passionate view on life and she gave me a twin sized mattress/platform to give my very first editorials on life. She listened to my 2 year old rendition of Kokomo by the Beach Boys and she thought I was the most talented little 3rd grader in the talent show (even though later perusal of that particular video proved otherwise). She found the fine line between crushing my spirit and discipline. She encouraged my individuality and when she knew I was headed in the wrong direction, she loved me all the more and hit her knees and begged for God to change me. And boy did He hear her. I think there's nothing more powerful than a mother's prayers. I'm proof after all.

Recently I've wondered to myself how the heck I'll ever live up to my mom's legacy? My kids are probably going to have NeeMaw on speed dial.

But Beth Moore has already taught me an important lesson about motherhood. One I should've learned from my mother, but somehow missed. God is going to give me children that are the best children for me. As long as I keep the One who so tenderly stitches together a mother's heart at the center of my life, my kids will think the same way about me as I do about my mom. And that right there will be the biggest accomplishment of my life.

From Feathers from My Nest:

-"Remember, God's peace is like a river, not a pond. In other words, a sense of health and well-being, both of which are expressions of the Hebrew shalom, can permeate our homes even when we're in white-water rapids."

-"Engage in their lives, in their interests. Talk to them. And listen. Oh, what they teach us - not only about life in general but often about life at their particular address."

-"Carpool is best driven with two hands on the wheel, a heart full of love, a soul full of joy, and a head full of discernment."

-"To us, making it means that we each cast our votes in favor of family...even when we vote for different things in life. We love and confess our love to one another daily. We don't just let love and mutual concern develop naturally. I've learned that the things that develop naturally are usually things of the human nature, not the Holy Spirit's."