The other day McKenzie wrote her blog: ‘Help Needed’ and it smacked me right upside the head. She was talking my language – the competently incompetent.  I have that 4-year old mentality – I can do it MYSELF, Dang it! When really, I can’t. I keep messing up. I make bad choices. And then I have to go to Jesus and confess my independence, my willfulness. Why do I keep finding myself lapping this mountain?

If you’re like me, admitting you need help just isn’t something you want to do. Not because you don’t need it. Mostly because you just don’t want to bother anyone. Or maybe sometimes you don’t want anyone to see you ain’t got it so all together.

Somehow, we think we need Pinterest perfect Christian lives. We go to the urban hip church with the cool worship band and a fog machine, and the wooden pallet backdrop. We are boho vouge. We listen to Crowder and Mercy Me. We say all the right words…man we got that Jesus Jargon down; can I get an amen? We say things like:

We were “lost and on our way to hell when we felt that fire burning in our heart.”

We have a “family member who is a lost sheep, straying from the fold.”

Last week you “met a friend and had a time of communion and fellowship.”

You are going on vacation and need us to “pray a hedge of protection.”

We say, “I love you with the love of the Lord!” and “Can I share my testimony with you?”

BARF!!! And um, no I’d actually rather you didn’t. And how about you just love me? What’s this love of the Lord thing? Does that mean you really don’t love me but you’re just saying your do?

I used to wonder what it was like for someone who had never been to church before to visit for the first time. This weekend I got a real good idea. My nephew invited me to his Bar Mitzvah. I went to his synagogue. Since Judaism is the root of Christianity, I thought this would be really interesting and possibly familiar. Boy howdy was I wrong! Modern Judaism doesn’t resemble anything I’ve read in the Bible at ALL! Nothing made sense. I didn’t know what they were saying, I didn’t understand their rituals. The message was about the first man Adam having scales before he divided into male and female and that’s why we have fingernails. (I’m not making this up. http://www.aish.com/atr/Fingernails.html) The law was mentioned as a ‘suggestion.’ I left shaking my head in utter confusion. I can only imagine what the unchurched think we they leave a church service.

And how does God view all this Bible babble? He tells us in Revelation 3:15-18: “I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth. Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked: I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eye salve, that thou mayest see.

Did you read that? God equates our non-sense with vomit! We act like we have it all together when in reality we are naked mole rats.

Can we just get real? Or as Susan Powter said, “Stop the Insanity!” We are so lost in the look, the feeling, the lingo, instead of the very one thing we want –real and meaningful relationship– we just create distance from each other.  Like the beautiful beauty queen who never gets asked out on a date, we are perceived as unapproachable.

We deeply yearn for intimacy and for someone to know the real us, and at the same time are afraid to reveal our mess. Instead of becoming the Christian we long to be, instead of encircling ourselves with community, we are stagnating. The very word “stagnation” sounds nasty — a cross between “stink” and “gag” — like some crawling, vermin-infested, germ-ridden rottenness. The definition of “stagnation” isn’t much better — “a state of inactivity.” We are frozen in our broken imperfection instead of growing in grace for ourselves and each other.

I visited several Alcoholics Anonymous meetings to support a friend. I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to hear a bunch of alcoholics doing what I perceived would be whining about their disease and offering lame excuses for bad behavior. Wow, was I in for a rude awakening. I have never been in a group of people who were more real, and more honest with each other. As each spoke, they confessed their failure, laid their own weaknesses and frailties bear. And they held each other accountable. They admonished, rebuked, encouraged, rejoiced and grew closer to each other as the weeks went on. THIS I thought is what church should look and feel like.

God built us for relationship. Jesus calls us to live a transparent life. James 5:16 says, “ Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.” Whenever I hear the word ‘fault,’ I think of the referee in Tennis – ‘Fault!’ In Tennis, a fault is called when the rules of play are broken. In Hebrew, fault means to fall beside or near something, or a lapse or deviation from truth and uprightness, be it unintentional or willful. To be healed is to free from errors and sins, to bring about (one’s) salvation. It’s the working out of our salvation that Paul referred to in Philippians. “Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. Phil 2:12.

We have to quit living the redacted life, leaving out all the ugly bits we don’t want others to see. Share your weaknesses. Share your hard moments. Share your real side. It’ll either scare away every fake person in your life or it will inspire them to finally let go of that mirage called “perfection.” And that will open the doors to the most important relationships you’ll ever be a part of. It will open up the opportunity to build intimacy and community.

Let’s give each other, and more importantly ourselves some grace. None of us our perfect. Some of us, like me, are a perfect mess. But I think God looks at me and smiles the same way I did my mud caked 4-year old children. They were a dirty, loveable mess. They are MY mess. We are HIS mess. And He has the power to clean us up if we quit hiding and let Him. And he has given us each other for encouragement and support as we grow in becoming more Christ like.

Forgiveness liberates the soul, that is why it is such a powerful weapon. – Nelson Mandela

I get regular massages. I have years of stress and tension I carry in my body. For me to function well, it’s a necessary event. When I arrive, the therapist will ask how they can help. I always point them to my shoulders and neck. They may begin to work there, but often they find their way down to the middle of my back. It HURTS. Why are they always finding pain I didn’t know existed?

The other day I received a text from a friend that really caught me off-guard. She didn’t mean to, but she put her fist right in the middle of hidden pain and pressed in hard. I immediately emotionally reared up, pulled back, then cried out in pain. HEY GOD! What is happening here? I thought we dealt with that already? Apparently not.

Ok Sherylyn, you know what to do hear. Breathe through the hurt, release, forgive, release, forgive, rinse and repeat.

A few days later I was lying in bed just slowly waking up. My sweet husband had woken early, moved our 3 dogs out of the room and downstairs so I could rest. I had retrieved my phone from the bedside and was scrolling through email when a Facebook IM notification came through. From a friend who I had not heard from in 9 years. Our friendship ended poorly with me really hurting her. I was in a very bad transitional place in my life. I pretty much hurt everyone close to me. Years of hidden pain broke the dike I had built and spilled over like acid damaging me and everyone near me.

When her name popped up I just stared. HEY GOD! What is happening here? I am not ready for this. I didn’t open it for several minutes. I had to brace myself. When I finally built up the courage to read her message, I was blown away. She was asking for MY forgiveness. WHAT? But I was the one that hurt her, I was the one that needed forgiveness. Thus, the exchange of pardon and offerings proceeded and washed over hidden places in our hearts. And another miracle, in God’s perfect timing he had arranged for me to be traveling to her city that very week. O, how He loves us!

Have you ever scrolled through YouTube and seen those videos my Doctor Pimple Popper? Come on, I know I am not the only one who has wandered into the weird side of YouTube. Is it just me? Yes? No? OK, well allow me to enlighten you. This doctor is a dermatologist. She works with people to clean up old cysts and weird skin issues. Some are obvious – a giant infected pimple on the forehead of an elderly patient. An odd hump on someone’s back that needs to be removed. Sometimes, it’s a hidden pustule. From the surface barely visible to the untrained eye, once breached it yields its content, putrid and fowl.

This is just as true of hidden sin or pain in our lives. Left unaddressed, it is buried alive and will certainly resurface in due time. Left untouched as was said of Lazarus, “By this time he stinketh.” John 11:39. Until we bring it to the Throne of Grace, or until the Great Physician skillfully reveals the concealed injury, we are left with sadness, guardedness, hurt feelings, depression, judgement, anger, and anxiety. It stinks to high heaven and infects those around us.

When we are saved, the Holy Spirit comes in and does a major clean up job. No matter how dramatic the conversion may seem, we are not made perfect. There is a working out of our salvation. A continual cleaning process. Matthew 5:13-16 says, “Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure. We aren’t working for our salvation, rather like lifting weights, we are working it out, growing stronger in our faith. Your salvation isn’t the end of your spiritual journey—it’s the catalyst that turns on your “operation mode.” Part of that work out process is a cleanse that can reveal putrid matter.

We have a promise in Philippians 1:6, “Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ:” He’s not done with us! My life has been littered with mistakes—my own mistakes and the mistakes of others. And in every one of those incidents, God came along, picked up the litter, and put it back together in a way that transformed it into a monument for faith. I can look back and say, “It was at that very point, in the midst of that adversity, that this part of my character began to grow and my relationship with God really deepened.” Hellen Keller said, “Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet. Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved.”

What we shouldn’t do is stay frozen in our suffering or rebury it. Doing so will only prolong the suffering until once again it is raised to the surface to be addressed. “If only . . .” is a haunting phrase. When you dare to see the truth and accept responsibility for your life, you may feel sad and ashamed. You may regret your irresponsibility and destructive behavior and wish to erase the past. The Bible is full of stories of regret. The process of spiritual renewal may occasionally be painful. When you confess the truth about yourself, it hurts. But as you begin to see the truth, speak the truth, and accept responsibility for your life, you’ll discover the great relief and hope that God offers.