All My Secrets

I laid in bed wide-awake long into the night and woke hours early this morning. The weight of my humanity, my failures, my gaps lined themselves into a neat little parade to traipse around my soul. Typically I have strength to handle negative thoughts, as they are exaggerated and easy to spot as untrue.

However, these were true. Every horrifying layer.

Many and cyclical, they left me with a metal taste in my mouth.

Recently, I have had clear eyes into my Self, straight into my GLARING blind spots. The clarity of my actions and motivations, ripple effects and results are unable to ignored. It has been painful. Mortifying. (But, somehow, intensely exhilarating)

I have set forth to improve myself in the past, seen flaws and approached them. I assure you…. This is different. This is stark. And real. And speaks to my deep-seated motivations for life, habit structures, emotional bandwidth.

 How have I lived like this for so many years?

The last few months have been an unanticipated hard-ass journey. I fear I have come to the limit of my own ability.

A full and complete change, of mindset and life approach, is imperative. 

But, how do I do that?  How do I take what I now see and transform?

I feel stymied on how to change.

So, along with the clarity, I also wrestled long into the night with how to begin to start the process of a major internal shift.

As I laid in bed, alternating between pulling the covers over my head and tossing and turning, I came to the end of me.

“Lord,” I cried out. Lord….. I am in need of you.”

 I gathered all the transgressions in my arms and in a last ditch effort of my strength, “brought them before the cross, asking Jesus to wash them in his blood.”

Instantly, I felt … I can’t describe it….like I had come to the wrong place. I tried again, Kneeling before the cross I see in my mind, the ground muddy and sodden. I tried to unload my heavy arms. I could not. I raised my questioning eyes to look at the cross and instead looked into a wide empty  expanse of a cloudy night sky.

 And then understanding washed over me.

He is no longer on that cross. While the promise of the blood, death, resurrection remains, I no longer need I go before the cross.

I have done that.

For now, it was so clear, 

I need to go before the throne. 

The throne? Are you kidding?

The Holy Place? Before His majestic presence?

Weak and tear soaked? Surely, I have been mistaken.

It is easier for me to go in shame before the cross… dirty and broken, head bowed and lay my nasties at torn and bloody feet.

Somehow, going before his thrown with my all ugly gathered in a wrinkled mess in my arms….. it seems wrong. Unholy. Sacrilegious. And NOT worthy of his glory. How can I lay all my shame at the base of the mighty throne? How can I ask to be washed clean? I am inherently opposed to being the dirtiest, lowliest in the room.

In fact, I run from that with everything in me. (it is actually one of the rumpled misdeeds in my arms) I believe that I spend more hours than I am comfortable admitting trying to NOT be at the bottom.

So….Is this is what I need?

To be ok with walking into the throne room unclean?

To be a spectacle of filth…. No sparkling garb to hide my darkness, no perfume to cover my stench, no makeup to hide my tired and angry eyes?

I am okay singing about his glory.

I am perfectly okay to enter into worship, joining with the angels with arms outstretched singing Holy, Holy, Holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come. 

I am okay with picturing myself in a long white gown, pure and whole, bowing before him with gifts in my hands.

I am quite comfortable imagining myself entering his presence as a whole and pristine daughter of the king.

The awful truth: I am not okay with coming as I am. Even though that is what I have been taught my whole life; go freely before the throne.

Mere hours ago, I would have thought I did freely come.

 But, really, I come before his throne only when I am confident in my righteousness.  I have always reserved the right to dart back to the cross - dirty, broken, ashamed.

The strength that I am trying to drum up to walk into that gold crystalline room is absurd. All my coping mechanisms are in full array, attempting to usher me into that precious room without a stain.

I didn’t know it would be so hard.

I wish I could tell you I did it. And speak about the other side. 

Pray for me today. I am being stripped of my strength, emptied of me, asked to come broken and bruised, limping and weary into the most holy of holies.