It’s Not About the Distractions, It’s About the Dance
Facing a sink full of dishes that need to be hand-washed because the dishwasher needs a new circuit board can be seem like a cruel joke. I know because that’s what happened to us yesterday. Happy Easter, right?! And happy birthday to my husband who spent over an hour taking it apart to diagnose the culprit.
It can be easy to wallow in self-pity and entertain thoughts with you and your being inconvenienced at the center. But life will always be full of distractions, curve balls, and lemons. They in fact help make us who we are inside. Are we inward-focused? These moments will highlight it. Are we impatient? These moments will bring it out in full force. Do we feel we deserve life to go our way? These moments will help define us, one way or the other.
Our life may not always be pretty, but really, being authentic and relatable is irreplaceable when it comes to relationship-building. The wall that isn’t decorated yet, the light fixtures that haven’t been updated yet, the handprints on the window that haven’t been wiped off yet, the remaining residue of clutter that hasn’t found its proper home and is on your counter yet, the window that doesn’t have curtains yet, the stain that hasn’t been scrubbed out of the carpet yet . . . these actually are not a turn off to most of the people you welcome into your home.
Think about the places where you have visited where you feel most relaxed. Were they the most expensively furnished? The most exquisitely decorated? The largest? The most impeccably tidy and organized? Or were they the ones that made you feel like it is ok that your own home isn’t perfect is every scrutinizable way? The ones where laughter flows easily, the conversation is authentic, the welcome is genuinely warm? Are they the ones where memories were created, where you were with people you love, where you knew there would be ample grace for footprints across the floor, the crumbs dropped by your kids, and the shoes left astrew throughout the house?
Friends, let’s stop giving so much credence to the distractions in our lives and become adaptable enough to dance in spite of them. If we let the things that are imperfect about us and our homes convince us we can’t open up and let those nearest us in proximity—our neighbors—in, we can’t pursue the God-sized dream of loving well and living like Jesus right in our own neighborhoods. We could have kept our garage door closed yesterday to deter the neighbor kids who wanted to play, I could have not picked up my phone to invite over a friend a few houses further down the street, we could have not invited our friends to join us for dinner at the “fancy table” (our new, giant farm table—more on that to come!), but what would that have gained us? Nope, instead we used paper plates, and opened our home even with the dishwasher in pieces and the dishwasher racks full of dirty dishes out on display. And friends, it was a good day. Not the day we envisioned, but still a really wonderful Easter.
Dearest Daddy, I ask that you would wrap us up in your embrace. Would you remind us that we are enough, our homes are enough, because YOU are enough? Please fill us with courage and a vision too big to fit inside our hearts, and do as only you do, because you do it best. We love you. Amen.
