Mark: My Dirty House
Ok, Confession time: my house is a mess. I’m not talking about like when you go over to Pastor Jason’s house and his awesome wife Kelley says, “I’m sorry the house is such a mess” but in reality you could still eat off the floor. No, my house is a mess in the nasty frat house kind of a way. You see, I’m a single guy living in a 100-year old drafty house, and I live way out in the country (at least a half hour from my closest friends). Since it’s never convenient for people to come out to my house, I’m never really motivated to really clean up much, and frankly - I’m a slob. My house was so dirty, that even after dating for a year, I hadn’t let my girlfriend Courtney come over. Sure, she wanted to come see it, but I was just too embarrassed to let her come in. I honestly believed that if she saw my house, she’d leave me. For the past few months, she’s been getting more and more persistent about coming over to see what will one day be “our house” and finally she wore me down. I told her that the weekend of our one year anniversary I’d let her come up and see the house. So last week I totally cleared my calendar with no other purpose than to get my house presentable to Courtney. I got everything I had to do for R2 done on Monday (a task that’s usually not completed until at least Friday afternoon), bailed on a couple meetings, and even missed watching Lost so that I could stay home and clean the house. Unfortunately, lots of things kept popping up through out the week, and when Saturday rolled around, the house was only about halfway done - and still looked terrible. I couldn’t bear to disappoint Court on our anniversary, and a promise is a promise, so I just bit the bullet and brought her up to the house anyway. I was so nervous Friday night that I couldn’t sleep. I know that Court loves me, and that our love is much deeper than my dirty, messy floors, but I couldn’t help honestly feeling like this might be it for us - that there’s no way she would still love me if she knew how bad it really was. Literally, up to the second that opened the door, my stomach was in knots and I had a cold sweat thinking about what her reaction would be. I’ve gotta tell ya, my girl is awesome. I gave her the tour of the house - junk and all, and she just smiled at me and said, “It’s not as bad as you said it was. You shouldn’t have worried so much,” then began helping me finish the cleaning the rest of the house. I’m sure inside her head she was saying a lot of “ugh’s” and she let out a couple “you’re such a guy“‘s, but she never judged me for it, just helped me fix it. As Courtney and I left my now-clean house on Saturday night, I couldn’t help be think of that’s how we often feel about our relationship with Jesus. That there are things we feel like we have to hold back, things we feel like if we tell Him about, that He won’t love us anymore. We feel like until we “fix ourselves” that we can’t really let Him in to see our insides. But in fact, if we just have the faith to let Him in, He’ll wrap His arms around us, tell us that He still loves us, and help us make things right - It doesn’t matter how dirty your house is, He’s always right there at the door waiting to come in and help you clean it up.im about, that He won’t love us anymore. We feel like until we “fix ourselves” that we can’t really let Him in to see our insides. But in fact, if we just have the faith to let Him in, He’ll wrap His arms around us, tell us that He still loves us, and help us make things right - It doesn’t matter how dirty your house is, He’s always right there at the door waiting to come in and help you clean it up.
