Five Toes To Glory

I have a chronic issue. It flares up at the most inopportune times and often leaves me flushed and looking for the nearest exit door.

What I have is chronic foot-in-mouth syndrome.

Symptoms include not thinking before speaking, speaking entirely too much or too quickly and is often accompanied by a lack of filter and/or common dang sense.

Unfortunately, I haven't found many ways to treat it and I often am left with the taste of regret in my mouth. If any of you know me personally, you've probably witnessed this in some fashion and the inevitable look of, "Holy guacamole" when the moment of doom arises. I'd like to say that I have a tendency toward being socially awkward, but after 38 years of being called a "social butterfly" and "a hoot", I don't think I can claim that title. I think I just really stink at peopling sometimes. Example? While trying to make friends with a new family recently, I jokingly chimed in about how I just can't justify people doing a nautical theme when we are well over 250 miles inland. A small chuckle and dismissing look from the innocent party on the other end of my verbal bomb revealed that perhaps I should have thought about the fact that maybe said other party has her entire house decorated in a nautical theme and that I just managed to offend her inner Martha Stewart in less than 38 seconds. I am really good at things like this and even though I pray about it in extreme fashion, I still manage to jam all five toes in my mouth at least once a day. Lord, help me. If I just offended anyone with less than 5 toes on the same foot, my apologies.

Clearly, I am not perfect. In fact, when people say things like, "you seem to have it so together", I often retort with something along the lines of a snorting laugh or meager grin and ask them, "Books & covers, much?". I can appear to have it all together, it is true. There are times when I can appear so together that it makes me almost unrecognizable to myself and apparently, to God too. Yeah. He recently told me that I'd gone and made myself entirely too serious. The words, "You need to be funny, you need to be you" lovingly chastised my inner being recently. The oddest thing about that; I thought I was being funny. (Do y'all think Jesus ever laughed so hard He divinely snorted?)

After some deep heart searching, I realized that I had gotten uber serious as of late and kind of lost my sense of humor in the midst of....life. All of this led me to question myself. Am I working at my salvation? Am I trying to earn grace? Are my works lacking the much needed faith to be as effective as they should be? Who's glory am I working towards, mine or God's? OUCH. That last one left me reeling a bit. If I am going to be entirely honest, as I said I would be when I started this blog, I had to strip my motives down to the bare bones.

Truth: I was becoming a mild legalist. Afflicted with a case of Pharisee fever, I was getting a little too caught up with the "law" and not the "love", as Jesus asks us to. What that looks like is a churched-up version of the world and what Jesus kinda despises. From the outside, I don't know that anyone really even noticed. But, God knows everything, sees everything and the Holy Spirit will call us out when we aren't keeping it real. For this, I am grateful, as I was headlong on my way to becoming a full-blown Stepford-esque "church lady" and feeling a little too important about myself. It was a pretty great representation of what turns people off of church because I don't know that Jesus ever fretted about perfect eyeliner or not wearing the same outfit twice in the same month. No, Jesus went about loving on orphans and lepers, blind men and outcast women and always was more concerned about their hearts than their status or appearance. Pride is a sneaky son of a gun and will find ways to uproot any seeds of humility that happen to be sprouting in your life if you don't weed the garden every so often. God is supremely concerned with our motives, our works only count when they match our intentions. Can you dig it?

Truth: People pleasing is like slowly bleeding to death. Over time, drop by drop,  you will give yourself away and become deficient of love and anemic of grace in the process. Temptation to please leads to compromising to gain acceptance. Meaning, if you are serving anyone with the idea that they will love you more or think you're a little more than alright; check yourself before you wreck yourself, ok? People who truly love you, love you when you aren't doing a cotton-picking thing for them and will continue to love you if you never do another cotton-picking thing for them. Lysa Terkeurst blew my mind with this; "Do not confuse the command to love with the disease to please". Amen, sister. Loving God first and most often includes saying "no" to people and sometimes leads us to uncomfortable truths that may just be what sets them free from sinful behaviors. Ephesians 4:25 tells us, "Therefore, having put away falsehood, let each one of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another". If I can't tell my DFF (divine friend forever) when her crazy is hanging out or my neighbor-turned-husband when I've had enough Bigfoot documentaries and they can't be honest and tell me when I'm clammed up too tight in my hermit shell, that is just politely pretending and is NOT fellowship, amigos.

Truth: Churches the world over are full of hypocrites. IF you happen to think that you are not a hypocrite, I'd like to see what kind of mirror you have in your home. The one I have has this woman in it who really has a heart for Christ and falls short of doing His name justice every single day. I humbly submit to all of you that I am a sinner. I say one thing and do another without any real conscious effort to fall short. It is the nature of my flesh and your flesh too, please don't kid yourself into thinking that you are perfect because the real tragedy in that is you tend to lose sight of needing God in that mindset. Satan will let some folks lead a real easy life because he knows that they'll eventually stop needing God and therefore forget about salvation and live for their own gain. We see them everyday in the headlines and often covet their easy lifestyles and fortune. Again, a sneaky sin that winds it's way into our hearts and chokes out humility. Paul said in Phillipians 3:8 "Indeed I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For His sake, I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ". Paul, in his time, was the man before he met Christ. A true legalist and the fairest of the Pharisees, the man was at the top of his game and after meeting Christ, called his former life rubbish. RUB-bish. Paul walked away and traded his Ferrari in for a Prius (totally making this up for dramatic effect) and had the time of his life in prison cells and shipwrecks (this stuff I can't make up) because he learned to be content in every circumstance and to believe that Jesus would be worth it all for one simple reason. He completes us. His love covers and smothers everything that I can't get right and even after I unload on a class about how we need to feed the hungry and clothe the poor while my belly is full and my hide is clothed, He loves me. In that moment of utter hypocrisy, Jesus Christ the King, loves little, big-mouthed me. He loves whatever kind of hypocrite you are too, He is just that kind of Savior.

Conclusion? None of it has to do with church really, it really has to do more with what I am willing to do with the Gospel. If I love Jesus enough to walk with His people into transformation and witness miracles. Do I love Jesus enough to care about what He cares about or will I lose focus in favor of shiny, earthy things? What were we talking about again? (God told me to be funny, take it up with Him if you have an issue) Yes, yes, I remember. I was laying my yard sale out there for all to see. In conclusion, I searched my heart and found out something super cool.

I'm not perfect. I don't want to try to be the best everything. I just want to be the me Christ thought was worthy of dying for. Imperfect, flawed, fallen, but earnestly wanting to be better. To do better and to most importantly; love better. If I could earn my way into Heaven and gain all of the Kingdom of God as my eternal home, the Cross would be pointless. I may be a hypocrite, but I am no fool. Someday I will stand in front of Jesus and I won't have my arms overflowing with good works, trying to show Him how I served the least of these. No, my arms will be open and expectant, ready to accept an embrace from the Savior who I love.

"If anyone loves me, he will keep my word and my Father will love him and we will come to him and make our home with him." John 14:23 ESV