Ribbons and bows

We have been spending an awful lot of time fluffing our nest in preparation for baby boy coming, tearing out old branches and tossing stray things that have floated in, and rearranging its design. One of my biggest nesting projects has been sorting through all of my files. Jason and I are both keepers and usually can't part with things until they are like eight years old. In my filing case, I'd say more like fifteen years old. I found many files from high school and even older with keepsakes like magazines and missions articles and articles on big events like y2k and iraq and culture. I got a little lost in my digging but it was also kind of fun, but I did stick to my guns for sure about making a big recycle pile. If I haven't needed it or read it in eight or more years, then come on. It's gone. (Anyone else need to do this?)

In my tossing, I came across some material from youth group about "building a testimony." I remember one of the most frustrating questions they would ask you was: "What were you like before you met Christ?" and also "How is who you were different from who you are now?" Over high school and then college years, prior to marriage especially, it was difficult to pinpoint the changes actually. How had the gospel changed me? I didn't have a grand testimony of sin, i thought, and putting together a testimony of the impact of the gospel on me felt confusing since my testimony felt so boring and...the same as my life before.

I am nearing ten years post college and only feel I am just beginning in the past, oh, two years I'd say, to see the gospel as completely transformational in this little life of mine despite the continued simple storyline.

I am in an accountability group with women these days. We meet together mainly to confess sin, apply the gospel, and pray. I'm so thankful for these sisters in Christ. I have felt compelled for some time to have a group meet together in this way and it has been more pure and lovely than maybe any other study I have done because we're first addressing what most groups I have been in do on the side or basically never: talk about our sin. Describing it. Revealing it. Giving the details of it, when needed. And then rejoicing in the gospel of forgiveness that is in Jesus.

Our son is going to be in our arms in eight days. I smile as I write that line. We have books for each of our children that we write in as something comes to mind and I wrote a bit of a serious letter in his the other day. I told him that though we were waiting and excited to love him and welcome him, that I was most certainly going to fail him many times in this life and be much less than a perfect mother for him. Many memories of moments of the girls where I was lazy, or too harsh, or indifferent to their presence, or angry, or wildly ungodly in general came to mind and I realized I would sin against him similarly, in just days perhaps. I would not be able to define love for him. Instead I would mar it for certain, no matter my effort. So I was basically confessing my sins to come, what I knew would come.

Don't be tempted to say in your mind, No you're a great mother! Because the truth is that I am far less than perfect and with Christ it is actually the most peaceful thing to admit my weakness and the need for his power to rest on me. Without Christ, it looks hopeless to say that, it looks dim and gloomy and like I am casting a sad vision into my future. With Christ I can rest and have peace because I know what I can't do. And I know my capacities to fail and sin against those I love most, but I also intimately know THE GOSPEL: that Christ "is faithful and just to forgive me of my sins and cleanse me from all unrighteousness." (1 John 1). I have been SO GRATEFUL for that verse in my life lately.

The few days leading up to group last week I felt a little sick about the sins I would have to confess to my friends. Sometimes when I go to group I don't fear confession. I package up my sins in a way that feels familiar to everyone and in making it all feel normal to everyone in the room, I feel I push away potential judgment or condemnation. But mostly I end up pushing away the gosepl and the Jesus I so desperately want the world to know. If God himself had to die for my sin, then isn't it uglier than I speak of it? Isn't it appalling and gross and sad? My packaging of my sin with bows and ribbons says what the Pharisees have said, "Lord thank you that I am not a sinner like___." I am good enough the way I am and don't have much of a need for your gospel. It's the same heart in me that says, "I don't have a testimony." The same me that read that packet in youth group and didn't understand what I had been saved from because my sins weren't, in my mind, postersized and culturally graphic.

And even with all this in my head, I struggled even this week with letting the blood of Jesus, the gospel, be my only reputation I cared about. I still wanted to word my sins this way and that and before I knew it I was trying to tie ribbons again. Jesus spoke to my heart very clearly this week. My job was to accept the ugly of my sin. To speak it out loud and describe it with truth. And especially to then lean with all my weight on the fact that he would then forgive that sin and cleanse me from it. And to take an enormous, thankful, beautiful joy in the gospel of grace that covered me in front of my friends. I told them I knew I couldn't rely on them saying, It's okay. We understand. We totally relate. We've been there. If I was going to really really embrace the gospel I would have to be okay with perhaps thoughts running through their mind even as they try to give me grace themselves. We are all sinners and it is difficult to even respond to sin with a pure heart like Jesus. We are tempted to compare, evaluate, elevate ourselves, and judge. So I cannot even rely on my friends' approval. I need the approval of God. And I have that as I confess that I cannot possibly earn it. That my sin falls short of it. But that I have a mediator (1 Jn 2) who goes to the Father on my behalf to atone for my sin and to make me righteous when I cannot do that for myself.

I feel like I can give my testimony today if I have to. Not because of the interesting list of sins but because of the ways God has met me in my disgust daily. I feel better today about the sins of my past couple weeks. Because the gospel is changing me in each moment to have grace be sufficent for me. I feel better today about my son coming into the world in eight days. Because the gospel has been changing me as a mom and a wife and I know Jesus' forgiveness and cleansing will be there when I need it again.

I don't think I have ever been this thankful and aware of the gospel as I have the past two years of my life. Forget the ribbons and bows. The ugly is what has made me see the beauty of the blood of the Lamb. I am forever grateful Jesus. What a Lord. What a God. What a grace. I am humbled, changed, and set apart in joy.