Sometimes, the worse I feel, the more it seems I am barely holding it together by a thread, the more important it is to me to look put together. A little lipstick goes a long way sometimes in plucking up my courage to face the world. Maybe I'm tired, but if you can't see it, it's easier to get through some how. Even if no one sees me, it pulls me up and in, gives me back some sense of strength.
I don't think this phenomenon is unique to me either, maybe it's a female thing, or just control freaks. When I was in college, I had International Political Economy first thing in the morning. I am not a morning person, but I never showed up with out full makeup and my hair fixed. Why show up in your sweat pants and betray weakness? With three kids and a husband who prefers me without makeup, I am not as rigid about this as I used to be, but some days, I still find it makes me feel better, less frayed some how. I look in the mirror and I say to my self, ugh you look like a dishrag, stand up strait, curl your hair, and put on some lipstick.
I suppose this comes from being such a performance based person. I judge myself, and probably you too a little if I'm honest, by what I can get done. People who sit around just rub me the wrong way; part of my upbringing I guess. I find that I just don't feel worthy if I haven't accomplished anything.
I want to be able to Do something. Guilt is a constant companion of my to do list.
So it happens that I go rounds with the fact that God is not a performance based God. I don't have to Do anything, and I can't anyway. He doesn't care if I mop today or not, he'd rather have me love on my kids. The things he probably does want me to do, like get real with him about why I snap at my kids, or put loving my neighbor above my own schedule are not the things I have in mind either. The deeply Lutheran part of me wants to bring you a casserole, and then, seeing progress, mind my own business. I have put you on my schedule, checked you off my list, our relationship is tidy, but shallow. It is a realization that I have to come to over and over, that my worth is not about what I got done today. If I got short with my kids because they were interfering with my battle against the mini dogs that are spawning from the hair under my couch, then I have missed the point somehow. God's grace goes over my head like this about a million times a day. The balance between the day to day tasks and the big picture priorities of what my kids are seeing about God in me is an ongoing see saw on which I never seem to gain equilibrium.
Life is messy. God sees under my lipstick, and he knows that I'm a mess, and I'm starting to see that friendship and love is more about getting up in each other's mess than I thought. And while I'm not going to swear off productivity and become a couch potato, I need to let go sometimes; ease up, and try to see me the way God does, and to let others see me that way too. I used to have a deep belief that it is weak to let people see all that stuff, but I am learning slowly, that people who are too afraid of vulnerability to let people in, those people are scared, and that is the weaker thing.
Most often, my arms are too full of that neat little heavy package of put together, to receive unexpected moments of grace that only come when we are bare and honest and flawed, when I set down my casserole dish and my armor, and we talk, when I see the small things with my kids, when I align my priorities with God's.
Alas, this is a lesson I know I will have to learn many times over, but I hope today that I will make space for a little less perfection, and a little more love, I will dance in my kitchen, and cover my baby with lipstick kisses, and if you come on over to Soggy Bottom sometime, and I'm in my sweats, I promise I'll still let you in.
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