Abiding in Imperfection

Sunday I woke up at around 7AM to the baby crying and Annie telling me to take him so she could sleep. I walked with the baby through our completely trashed house and found Levi with butt in the air sleeping on the couch with legs dangled off. I sat beside Levi and watched a National Geographic documentary on Yosemite Park which ended up being 30% about how global warming is screwing up everything imaginable.

I dealt with the kids, made them breakfast, navigated which show they wanted to watch, navigated the mess that was our house in the early part of today, and briefly thought about not going to church so we could clean up the house. Have I mentioned the house was a mess?

Annie got ready and I continued to watch the kids, navigate shows, make sure Isaac wasn't eating an almond that one of the boys left in an undisclosed location. Then from the other room at 9:30, Annie says, "Michael, weren't you supposed to be playing guitar at church this morning?"

Why yes I was. And yes, I forgot in May as well. So after meeting face to face with my worship pastor telling him how unfortunate it was that I was not on worship team more often, I have the audacity to forget two out of three times that I'm supposed to do it. How humiliating.

So I get to church, and our recent routine at church is I take Isaac to his class and Annie takes Levi to his class (Samuel stays with us during the first part). So I do what I normally do and walk Isaac into the classroom to sit him down in his car seat. Except this time ended up being different.

"Whoa! Whoa! Whoa," the child care worker (and a friend of mine) told me. "You can't come in here". Having already been "in there", as they say, I said, "Why not?"

"It's the rule."

Just then another person walked up and clarified that, yes, indeed it was the rule.

"Since when was this the rule?" I said.

"Since last August."

"Well, that's stupid," I blurted.

She expressed offense.

I told her that my problem wasn't with her but with the stupid rule. I made sure to call it stupid one more time.

Oh wow, that felt great. Oh wait, I was just really rude to her. But it was stupid. Maybe I should just go into the main sanctuary.

So I sit in the main sanctuary for a few minutes before the service, and our music leader is just a few rows over, but I don't want to talk to him. I'm too humiliated. I sit through the first two songs and drum on Samuel's back through part of them then bolt with Samuel out of there to get him signed into class. I figure if I do that I won't include anyone else in my morning.

I make it back to my seat and see a lady wave in my direction. I start to wave back, and yes my hand is halfway up when I realize she's not looking at me. Well, she's looking at me, but not at me, but the person behind me. I turn my head and try to talk to Annie. The lady must have felt sorry for me, because she came up and said hi and made smalltalk, adding to the feeling of humiliation the morning was creating.

Next, I decide I'm going to include my champion, the one in my corner, the one who shares her entire life with me: Annie. I tell Annie, "I think I just pissed off someone in the children's ministry." She says, "Why?" I say, "There's this stupid rule about not bringing your kid in there." She says, "I like that rule; that's not stupid. I support anything that makes the children safer."

Well, alrighty then.

So the music starts, and I look up, and there's that spot where I'm supposed to be, and I start to think of the parts I'm supposed to be playing. And I feel uncomfortable, so I leave and go for a walk. Then I go eat a donut. Then I sit there. Then I check on the baby. Then I look in the service. Then they start to have communion, and I feel guilty for having a mouthful of donut in the middle of communion. So I go in there.

I sit there with communion in my hand and think about the show I watched last night. The show was on a lady dealing with obsessive compulsive disorder. She was obsessed with the weight of objects in her kitchen and kept thinking that her fridge was going to fall through the floor, take her with it, and she was going to die a horrible death. Her Cognitive Behavioral Therapist, after six weeks of twice a week therapy went and bought a bunch of groceries with her, filled up her fridge to the max, and just sat there.

The therapist wouldn't let the woman go out of that room until she experienced a let down on her anxiety. The therapist claimed that anxiety doesn't stick around if you stay in the situation and let it peak; it eventually goes back down because your mind resets to the reality that there is nothing really to be anxious about.

It turns out imperfection makes me anxious. I let my music leader down. I let the childcare worker down, who was enforcing a completely legitimate rule. I let myself down by being a jerk and unreliable. How do I get out of this? How do I make up for this? What am I going to do?

And so I heard God say to me, "Why don't you just sit here in this?" He wasn't going to fix it. Nothing was going to change. I was still a jerk to the childcare worker. I was still absent for the second time in three months from the worship team at church. He wasn't going to sprinkle the pixie dust and make it all go away. But the anxiety wasn't supposed to be there; peace was supposed to be there, even in the middle of imperfection.

Everyone makes mistakes. And sometimes not running from that reality is the best thing you can do for yourself. The longer you disallow imperfection in your life, the longer you walk down a freedomless path without God. It's only after you allow God's peace in your life without any preconditions of having your mess cleaned up that you can truly have a relationship with Him and others; a relationship based on safety and not fear.