Not That Clean

Maybe I am the only one who did this, but when my kids were little, it would never fail. After a stressful time of getting kids dressed and ready and loaded into the car, I would look over at the passenger seat and there would be one of my kids with chocolate stains on his or her face or mud or whatever.

So what would I do? You got it. The mommy spit clean. Didn’t want anyone thinking I was a bad mom who couldn’t keep her kids clean. The problem was even though the mud stain went away and my kid looked clean, he or she actually had my spit germs all over his or her face. The kid was way dirtier than when he had the mud stain on his face. Spit cleaning is gross. It was my fear of men (or in this case other moms) and what other people would think of me as a mom that made me do something like that.

When I first became a Christian so much of the advice I was given focused one externals, the stuff other Christians would see. Don’t do yoga? Horoscopes are evil? Don’t date a non Christian? It’s important to “witness” to non-believers, go to church. Nobody talked to me about the condition of my heart, which was really broken. Focusing on externals and thinking that is the way to be a good Christian only leads to self righteousness if you can maintain all the externals. I am reminded of Jesus telling the Pharisees that they were like whitewashed tombs with dead bones on the inside.

And if you can’t maintain all those externals, it just leads to feeling really defeated. I remember being wracked with guilt because I glanced at a horoscope in a woman’s magazine. When he chose a king, God cared more about David’s heart than he care about his physical stature. And when He chose me, he knew I loved him with all of my broken heart.
I think I have spent the second half of my Christianity trying to get back to that first love. How easy it is to be happy with the spit cleaned Christian life and the germs nobody sees. The problem is that people who do things to please men and people whose fruit is a result of a heart turned toward God often look the same. We can fool everyone but the one who matters. But God sees my heart and I want him to be pleased with what he sees, regardless of the world thinks. Regardless of how I fall short of those legalistic and kooky definitions of “good Christian mom” and “Good Christian wife.”