Doormats and Dirty Feet

I’m not a doormat.

But I have lived like one.  I’ve stayed put in situations where I know I should leave. Stood silently when people have spoken out of hatred and discrimination.

I have let people slander, falsely accuse, and violate me; their words like slung mud on my back.

I have acquiesced to going places and doing things in I had absolutely no interest.

I have smiled while men shared misogynistic rancor thinly veiled as jokes.

That’s doormat behavior.

Now wait – I know you’re going to tell me that I should bless those who curse me (Romans 12:14), or turn the other cheek (Luke 6:27-29), or that the meek are blessed and shall inherit the earth (Matthew 5:5). I would say, yes! I agree wholeheartedly.

So what am I talking about, then?

Motivation.

I’m ashamed to say that too many times, my motivation for turning the veritable cheek is not Christ-likeness. Rather, my motivation is acceptance, or fear, or apathy.

That’s doormat behavior. Limp, passive, going nowhere, and getting trampled.

My calling is to be more like Jesus, and Jesus was no doormat. Jesus cleaned feet, yes, but that’s where the similarities end. Jesus willingly, intentionally donned clothes of a servant, knelt at people’s feet, poured fresh water on the dirty and muddy places and made them clean.

Want to know the distinctions I see between doormats and footwashers? Water and work.

When my motivation is spiritual growth, focus on Jesus, and pursuing righteousness, I enthusiastically work to wash the feet of my friends and foes alike by bearing with those who require extra grace, compromising on issues or excursions, or by calling out faulty thinking in order to edify (not embarrass).

It takes work to cover people with grace when their deeds might merit negative exposure. It takes self-control and character to be truly meek.

But more than work, it also takes water. Water, even more than active effort, is what sets a doormat apart from a footwasher, because water thoroughly cleanses, and unlike a doormat, leaves no trace of soil on the either the person serving or being served.

Doormat living thrives on dirt. The soil of passive-aggression to avoid conflict. The soot of absorbing the maltreatment of others because you believe it’s your lot in life. The motivation of doormat living is self-pity and pride. Self-loathing is a crazy hubris; it is believing that even if God says I’m made in His image, He’s wrong…but only about me. It’s attempting to live like we’re just dust even after receiving God’s breath.

We have this treasure, this water, so to speak, in our earthen vessels (2 Corinthians 4:7-12). The treasure is the Holy Spirit (2 Corinthians 3:17-18). This water is the God-given ability to forgive and be forgiven (1 John 1:6-9 is so enlightened by John 13:3-10!), so we can continually walk in peace with God.

No one but God knows the motivation behind our actions; and we can live the façade of holiness while all the while having a heart of a white-washed sepulcher, encasing dead men’s bones instead of living water.

I hate to ask myself this (too convicting), but must, continually: what is my motivation in turning the other cheek, in remaining silent, in pausing before I respond? Is it to be mired in dirt, or to emulate the One who is making me clean?

DTS Chapel, June 15, 2011

Dr. Kreider (one of my fav DTS profs) spoke at DTS chapel this week, and I sang before he preached. You can find it here.

grasshopper

I wasn’t even aware of its existence until it came in my house far too early in the morning, clutching the end of my daughter’s finger like a grubby toddler holding on to a sucker.

“Mom! Look what Dad found last night when he was watering the grass! He put it in the bug box for us so we could look at it!” “It” was an enormous grasshopper, green as Kermit the Frog with none of Kermit’s appeal, and I wanted it out of my bedroom. Thankfully all it took was a grimace from me, and off went my little band of entomologists.

A minute later my 5 year-old returned, a bit awed and flabbergasted. Apparently when the grasshopper had taken flight in the direction of a hedge in our neighbor’s front yard, a mockingbird spied it, and gave chase. A second after the grasshopper took refuge in the hedge, the mockingbird stuck its head in, grabbed it, and had breakfast. Blech…talk about wild kingdom.

That quickly my attitude toward the grasshopper reversed. A minute before, I had wanted it gone…now I just felt badly for it.

Probably says more about me than about the grasshopper, though.

Lately, life has just felt like that. I get out of one scrape just to get clobbered by whatever it is that’s coming around the corner. I know that God loves me, that He has given me all I need in Christ, and that I am blessed beyond measure… but often I just feel rejected, abandoned, and beat up.

So this summer I’m challenging myself to remember that my feelings don’t always reflect the truth about my life. I want to (again) learn to consistently and intentionally bathe myself with Scripture so the truths there imbed themselves in my mind and heart. I must give my feelings, so fragile and unsteady, an anchor in something outside myself and my circumstances. My goal is to remember that if I will wait upon the Lord, I’m promised something that’s compared to flying like an eagle, not being breakfast for a mockingbird. Amen to that…

Not Just Anyone

The meltdown I had in the Chick-fil-A parking lot yesterday was hotter than the spicy chicken sandwich I’d driven there to order. The day was hot, 98 degrees, and I was a hot mess. With my forehead on the steering wheel, I gasped for air and cried in loud, serrated sobs to Sharifa. With all the windows down and the noon-time drive-thru crowd stacking up, I poured out to her all that had sparked a full-blown panic attack.

Degrees of friendship are felt in these heat-of-the-moment battles for our hearts. Mine reminded me that we need at least one “not-just-anyone.”

Not just anyone could have said, with conviction and love, that I was acting not out of generosity toward others, but out of self-loathing—saying “yes” to any request because I valued myself so little. What do I have to do with my time? I have no family, no children, not even a dog. I lounge at home and eat the Number 3 Chick-fil-A value meal.

“No,” she said. “It’s blasphemy to treat yourself as if you have no value; God paid too high a cost for you to do that. He loves you—He is for you.”

Days upon days of delighting in my friend’s presence rushed back to me: Sitting on her kitchen floor, talking as she made dinner; Saturday mornings full of pancake-making; Walks through her neighborhood, past the sprawling white house with the upstairs porch, through Texas heat waves; the hours slumped against her arm in silence, stunned at the loss of a love, at the loss of a dream. I ached for her nearness. Not just anyone in the middle of a panic attack could have doused me with such truth—and grace. It extinguished the fire. I found myself laughing as I stuffed salty waffle fries into my mouth, profoundly grateful for a not-just-anyone.

Not-just-anyones remind us that we, too, are not just anyone.

Nelson Mandela—South Africa’s freedom fighter—understood this core of our being:
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate; our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. As we let our own light shine, we give other people permission to do the same; as we’re liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

What Mandela understood, Jesus made possible.

Eugene Peterson, in The Message, paraphrased how Jesus transforms people who feel like nothings into somethings: “God knew what he was doing from the very beginning. He decided from the outset to shape the lives of those who love him along the same lines as the life of his Son. The Son stands first in the line of humanity he restored. We see the original and intended shape of our lives there in him. After God made that decision of what his children should be like, he followed it up by calling people by name. Hosea put it well: ‘I'll call nobodies and make them somebodies; I'll call the unloved and make them beloved. In the place where they yelled out, ‘You're nobody!’ they're calling you ‘God’s living children’” (Romans 9:25–26).

When you are walking through fire, do all that you can to let it refine and strengthen you. Shout for help. For you are not just anyone; you are a child of God. So don’t play small; shine.

Wade in the Water

I watched my son’s fingers tremble as he stretched out his arms to greet the stream of shower water for the first time. He couldn’t fathom these jets of wet about to engulf him, but he was willing to reach out anyway. It was irresistible.

His eyes widened as the shower head came closer. I can imagine him assessing the situation: Is this being friend or foe? It’s in Mommy’s hand, but can I trust it? Will it hurt me? Can I bite it? Touch it? Sip it?
He chose to furtively but decisively reach out and touch in wonder and in fear.

My little one taught me a huge lesson during bath time that night; how to trust the Lord in the downpour.
God uses water to remind us that He’s got us during life’s torrents. (Even now as I write, my son’s white noise is echoing in the baby monitor – ocean waves.)

Think I’m coming out of left field? Look at Moses’ life; one day he’s the illegally-born son of Israelites, the next he’s a refugee-turned-heir in Pharaoh’s court. His life changed in the water, when he let the waves of the Nile carry him towards his destiny (come to think of it, that demonstrated more guts on his mother’s part than his own!).  His very name signified the moment he was “drawn out” of the water.

When he flees murder charges and heads to Midian, Moses stops at a…well.

At the epic moment of liberation, when the people of Israel crossed over to freedom from slavery, they crossed the Red Sea. Moses led them.

(The next generation would claim the Promised Land by crossing the Jordan River.

What churning, chaotic element does the Spirit of God move upon in Genesis 1:2? Water. And from that moment until now, God continues to “trouble” the waters in the lives of His people, to bring justice (Genesis 7), to heal (John 5:1-9), or to humble (2 Kings 5:1-14).

Jesus, who has authority that Moses could only dream of (check out Numbers 20:8-13 to see what I mean), demonstrated His power through the water. His first miracle: changing water into wine (John 2:1-11). The symbol of belief in Him: baptism (Romans 6:4). His promise to the Samaritan woman at the well: living water that springs up into eternal life (John 4:13). The care for His bride, the Church: bathing her in pure water so that she is spotless and radiant (Ephesians 5:25-27).

Oh, and the storms. Jesus – He’s got control of that, too (Mark 4:35-40). How many times have I thought the Lord must be napping while I’m going under? Buffeted by the bills, the worry, the loneliness, the bereavement, I have cried to the Lord.

And only God can turn the major storms in life into a path of victory (can I get an “amen”?). What was an obstacle becomes a vehicle to faith. I know the Israelites that walked on dry land in the middle of the Red Sea that would later drown their captors can testify to that (Exodus 14:21-29). I know Peter, who was sinking in the stormy waters, and then walked on them through Jesus’ encouragement, can testify to that (Matthew 14:28-33).

I pray that God uses the image of my baby boy, trembling but willing to get wet (and now he even enjoys the spray!), to remind me of His lovingkindness towards me. The sea and storms of life are tools in His sure hand. And He is making me clean.