Sometimes it just isn’t about you (or me). I’d love to say that I know this down through the toes of my running socks to the tips of my hair each and every day from the moment I wake up until I drop into bed at night. But then I’d be lying to you, and you know what a terrible liar I am; it’s that guilt thing innate to Southern women.
Recently I took a little road trip that hadn’t exactly gone my way, and on the drive home I threw myself a bit of a pity party (I am sooo not proud of this.). Tears flowing, sobs gasping, and all that nonsense. As, I’ve said before, I am not a pretty crier. Thank heavens I hadn’t bothered with make-up because not all the tissues in Arizona would’ve cleaned up that mess. (Normally, this Southern girl lives by the axiom that a well brought up lady only leaves the house without lipstick when she’s on her way to the gym or some such activity; but, hey, 8 hours alone in a car – who cared what I looked like?)
So, 7:00 am, somewhere around San Bernardino, CA. Mostly cried out, jittery from not eating, I saw the McDonald’s sign ahead, and nothing sounded better then than mouth-scorching coffee and an Egg McMuffin. My lack of make-up may have scared the poor drive-through girl, but I’m hoping she’ll recover. As I sat waiting in the line of cars, I’m again ashamed to admit that I resumed my pity party just the tiniest bit, so very focused on what was missing in my life.
So, eventually, I got my food, and as I was pulling away, I looked into the rear-view mirror and watched as a man who could have been anywhere from 40-70 lifted the lid off the trash bin outside the restaurant doors. He began to sift through the nasty, discards of other peoples’ meals. And I felt the breath sucked from my chest .
Who was this woman who cried over a social conflagration when there were men literally eating out of garbage cans in suburban America? How ungrateful, how immature, how inhuman could I possibly be? The woman who stared back at me from the mirror with her red, swollen eyes and blotchy cheeks could not possibly be the real me. In fact, I knew it wasn’t the real me. I’d just had a momentary lapse of moral judgment, and God pulled me up short. A very vivid reminder that I am, in fact, not the center of the universe, anyone’s universe – not even my own; a reminder that not everything is about me. And then character and integrity broke through, and I remembered who I am (or at least who I try to be), and the tears that fell then had nothing to do with me but rather for a world that left men to eat out of garbage cans.
I found myself praying the same prayer with which I generally begin my days: let my hands be Your hands, my feet be Your feet, my words be Your words. But I reserved the hardest prayer – let my heart be Your heart. I just couldn’t say it, too terrified that I wasn’t up to the challenge.
Let my heart be Your heart -six words that rock my core and strip me of everything extraneous. I’ve never been able to whisper that sentence and not be immediately and overwhelmingly broken, crushed really, by a sadness that could not possibly belong solely (or “soul-ly”) to me. But then standing in church beside my parents and my brother and his boys on Mothers’ Day, I did ask for His heart, and the anguish I knew to expect crashed over me. The tears silently washed down my face carrying away the artifice so carefully applied only an hour before. And my heart stood plainly open on my face, nothing to hide behind as His heart barely brushed mine. And I could handle His heart for all of about 30 seconds. Then I prayed, I begged, for it to stop.
How does He do it? How does he listen to everyone’s needs, concerns, terrors, both spoken and unspoken? How does He withstand the onslaught of our doubts and demands? How does He love us through His disappointment in our failures. Mercy, forgiveness, selflessness, grace. But so much pain – pain that we inflict upon Him because we just can’t manage to figure out our lives and relationships. Because that amalgamation of Love is His heart.
So, maybe this should be my prayer: place me through the refiner’s fire. Burn out my impurities. Let me know who I am supposed to be, and teach me to be strong for and in you. And if it has to hurt, then let it hurt. But please wrap me in your mercy so that I can stand again, breathe again, move again when the embers cool.
To love with His heart – that’s all I really want.
The Unexpected Life 