White as snow

The other week, I did a thorough reorganizing of my closet because I become meticulously tidy when I can no longer stand being a slob for weeks on end.

Everything has a designated place in my home, but from time to time, those things don't immediately make their way back to their spots.

When needing to get our apartment orderly-looking in a jiffy, I got into a bad habit of throwing loose things into my closet and just closing the door.  Everywhere else looked like a well-kept, tidy home, but I hid a piling secret in my closet.

After several mornings of tiptoeing and squeezing around the pile to find an outfit, I finally decided that enough is enough.

So I set to work one snowy day.

First on the pile.

Then going through each piece of clothing, deciding whether I needed it or not.  You know the drill.

There was refolding, color-coordinating, and bagging.

It took hours.  Partially because I stopped to take a nap.  And I would get sidetracked here and there (oh, look at this box of cards I found from my husband!  Then I would read them...)

When I was younger and would clean my room and organize my closet, my mom would inevitably come back to find me sidetracked, sitting on my floor hours into the process, looking sentimentally through my stuff.  It makes organizing go much slower.  But I don't know how else to be.

My husband asked what I was going to do with my wedding dress, which was tucked away in a box on a top shelf in my closet.  I guess it will just stay in this box until I die, I thought.

Well, strangely, the very next day, I got a message from fellow med school wife Deanna, a photographer looking to take pictures in the recent snowfall of anyone willing to don her wedding dress.

Hmmm....I thought.  It's been years...could I?  All my grading is done... I've been cooped in the house for 3 snowy days.  I'm bored.

So I did it.  It was just the right amount of spontaneity for me.

I spent way too much time trying to make my hair look good, only to create a funny cowlick in the back that wouldn't go away.  And when I did get outside, I didn't care what I looked like anymore, because my only thought was how I could keep my body temperature from plummeting.  It was much colder than I anticipated, but I gave her my word.  And I was already all dressed...so I posed the way she told me to (she was such a good director), and the shoot went on!

And now's the part where I post a shameless picture of myself in my wedding dress.  I love how she captured the light through the veil.

To be honest, I just wanted to put it on again...to feel like a young and pretty bride...vanity of vanities....

But afterwards, it caused me to reflect on something much bigger.  After my fingers thawed out, and I was home again, on the couch, in my sweats, much less glamorous looking, I closed my eyes and thought of myself in that dress, in the snow. So white.  So clean looking. And I thought of myself as Christ's bride.  Once stained and hopeless, dead in my sin.  Now, white as snow, He says!

“Though your sins are like scarlet,

They shall be as white as snow"
Isaiah 1:18

Such joy at the thought!  And then this song came to mind - What Can Wash Away My Sin?

I can be so judgmental sometimes

"God, I thank you that I am not like other men..." ~ Luke 18:11

That self-righteous prayer is so gross.  I found myself thinking this week, "Gosh, I'm sure glad I'm not like that horrible Pharisee."  Wait...ah!

And I remembered other times too.  Times when I have thought of myself more highly than I ought, only to be brought low and reminded of my great need for Jesus:

I had a downstairs neighbor who I judged.

She was kind of weird and never smiled, even when I tried to befriend her.  I thought she hated me.

In apartment living, you can hear your neighbors through the walls from time to time.  One time, I heard what sounded like crazy crying, coming up through the vent.  Like crazy, uncontrollable crying, with yelling.  And at other times, loud, loud singing to Adele.

Yikes.  She's a little unstable. - I thought judgmentally to myself, eyebrows raised superiorly. Nobody saw me think these things.  So my sin was safely hidden...even somehow from myself.

I don't think my sin was in noticing that she seemed unstable.  That was an honest observation. And I felt badly for her, whatever she was going through.

My problem was that in that moment, I felt better than her.  Not that I was doing better, but that I was better.  Made of different stuff.

Fast forward a year later.  This time it was me crying, in my room, alone.  So frustrated. Nobody could see me. So I let myself be raw.  Really raw.  I wept loudly on my bed, letting my disappointment and hurt be laid bare before God.  I threw a comb across the room and heard the satisfying sound of it hit the wall. And I yelled things that no good, Christian girl would yell.

After the release, I was quiet....and suddenly remembered in horror our thin apartment walls. I was horrified that my neighbors, Christians no less, heard me.  No!!  What will they think of me? Only a fool gives full vent to his anger!  Out of the heart the mouth speaks!  Oh no, they'll think I'm crazy!  Or two-faced!  In the days to come, my suspicions grew when the encounters with these neighbors felt...polite, but...weird.  One day, I was overcome with embarrassment and guilt for not being more...admirable. Presentable. Measured. Spiritual. Mature.

I admitted my embarrassment to my husband and a friend.  We joked that I should apologize to my neighbors for the crazy houseguest who was visiting.  That I was trying to minister to her.  Poor soul.

And I felt so ashamed for judging my neighbor the year before, that I thought her less than me.  This is fitting, isn't it, Lord?  You said that we would be judged to the measure that we judge. I'm getting a taste of my own judgement.  Forgive me!

I had seen my sin, in a new light.  My ability to look down my nose at others.  My ability to unleash anger.  My fear of man.  My desire to protect my "image."  My amazing concern for self right after my outburst. My unbelievable pride.

My small group was discussing what "Gospel-Living" looks like, and our tendencies to pretend we're okay or to perform to win God's good graces.  I had to wrestle with this question that was asked - As God thinks of you right now, what is the look on his face?

Delight is the look I'm used to seeing on his face.  But, at this time, I couldn't see His face.  I couldn't see what expression He was making.  It was unclear to me.  Like a gray face.  So I imagined that maybe what I perceived I saw in my neighbors' faces mirrored the expression on His face.  Uncomfortable. Embarrassed for me.  Are you embarrassed by me, Lord?  Are you ashamed of me in this moment, in front of your other ("with-it") children?  If I had responded more maturely in my weak moment, said this and not that, would that have secured the delighted look on your face?

But wait.  If He is ashamed of me, then how is that Good News?  What kind of Gospel am I believing?

There is no one who does good, not even one.

Psalm 53:3

Righteous deeds are like a polluted garment.

Isaiah 64:6

So I made myself imagine what God's face must look like when He looks at His Son, his righteous Son, the one I bank my life on to make me right with God.  And the power of the Good News sunk a little deeper down into my heart, as it does whenever I realize what a pitiful, dirty creature I am and how He has made me righteous through Jesus, His perfect Son.

And I read this in my small group booklet again slowly: "Growing in the gospel means seeing more of God's holiness and more of my sin.  And because of what Jesus has done for us on the cross, we need not fear seeing God as He really is or admitting how broken we really are.  Our hope is not in our own goodness, nor in the vain expectation that God will compromise his standards and "grade on a curve." Rather, we rest in Jesus as our perfect Redeemer - the One who is "our righteousness, holiness, and redemption." (I. Cor. 1:30)

So, today, I am resting in that.