(If you're new to this non-intentional, somewhat spontaneous blog
series, please see my posts from June 21, June 26, July 5, and August 9 for
parts 1-4.)
So, the last time I posted here, I was spiritually dry-heaving. Now I
think I might be dry-heaving again and/or doing that scary thing that my little
cat did a couple of times. She puked repeatedly over the course of several
hours until she upchucked blood. Gosh. How do you handle spiritually puking
that hard in writing? I guess you end up writing about yourself in the second
or third person. Maybe it feels less scary that way, especially when the
infection made you angry enough in your past to implode and flip off the entire
world. Maybe it helps you feel like you're not accidentally dishonoring people
who you thought you were supposed to be honoring. Or maybe it's safer here
behind a computer screen. And maybe Proverbs 26:1 confirms that it ain't
supposed to snow in the summertime.
Once upon a time, a little girl was born to a polyglot nutty professor
and the Mexican version of Cindy Crawford. The professor was, of course, a
polyglot who had superhuman intellectual abilities. La Cindy Crawford mexicana
was, of course, a drop-dead gorgeous goddess who had colossal cover-up skills.
Both parents were complete polar opposites personalitywise, but they both
agreed silently and wholeheartedly on one thing: Their little girl was an ugly
duckling who may or may not ever become a swan. This was confirmed several
years later when a young swan was born to them, and she instantly bore la Cindy
Crawford's drop-dead beauty.
The little girl and the young swan were quite opposite, which became
more and more apparent while they grew up together as sisters. The little girl
was extremely self-conscious, but she was so engrossed in her artistic
endeavors to notice her unhappiness. The young swan was extremely comfortable
with her sassiness, and she was quite eager to grow up. She attracted quite a
few young duckling suitors. The little girl, on the other hand, wore the
professor's old clothes around the house and faked illnesses so that she would
not have to leave the house or interact with people.
One day, the little girl gave in to her Creator's nudges and knelt at
an altar, where she was supposed to have met Him. But instead of leading her to
Him, the professor assumed that He and the little girl had already met. Instead
of making sure that she knew what she was doing and that she had made an actual
decision, He sailed across the ocean of his superhuman intellect with which he
was quite familiar.
As the little girl entered her teens, she received increased pressure
from la Cindy Crawford to start wearing makeup. The little girl was well aware
of the blemishes on her face, but she was severely reluctant to paint her face.
Perhaps the professor and la Cindy Crawford felt that since they had spent
hundreds of dollars fixing her bucked teeth, she needed to at least try to
learn how to paint a few coats on her ugly-duckling face. Finally, la Cindy
Crawford added a hefty dose of forcefulness to her charms and painted many coats
on the little girl's face. The little girl was impressed and was convinced to
begin painting her face on a regular basis.
The little girl eventually surprised everyone and shed her
ugly-duckingness for swanness. No longer faking illnesses or being afraid of
interacting with the human race, she raced out of her home and sprinted for
college.
While she was at college, a strange thing happened. She re-met her
Creator. He became closer to her than He ever had before, and He began to show
her how non-ugly she really was. She began to re-learn what it meant to be a
woman. As the years passed, she eventually, gradually stopped painting her face
completely.
One day, la Cindy
Crawford came to visit the grown-up little girl, and she saw some Bible verses taped to the grown-up little girl's mirror. They were verses from 1 Peter that
said that her beauty was incorruptible and that it came from a gentle and quiet
spirit. With layers of paint on her face and a scoff in her voice, la Cindy
Crawford told la niña adulta that
the Bible verses didn't mean that she should stop making herself look beautiful
on the outside.
Whenever the grown-up
little girl would visit the professor or la Cindy Crawford, the latter would tell
the former to give messages to the grown-up little girl: Dress nicely and wear
perfume. La Cindy Crawford was too busy to deliver these messages herself
because, of course, she was occupied skillfully covering herself up. In fact,
she did very few of the things that the verses in Proverbs 31 say to do.
Instead of rising early to feed her family, she would sleep until 10:30 a.m.
and instruct the grown-up little girl to not tell callers that she was still
sleeping. The professor would fear her more than he would praise her. She would
gossip and slander instead of loving and protecting. She would wash dishes and
cook meals instead of developing relationships and making memories. She would
dress nicely and wear perfume instead of bathing daily. She would stare at
cable TV instead of reading her Bible.
Many years later, after
the grown-up little girl had severed ties with the professor and la Cindy
Crawford, her Creator began to show her how these two people had, in fact,
blocked her from Him. From the polyglot nutty professor's failure to introduce
her to Him (so that she would have to find Him herself) to the Mexican version
of Cindy Crawford's success in butchering her healthy concept of womanhood (so
that He would have to re-create it all over again), these parents had
ultimately hurt their little girl by blocking her from her Creator -- from the
One who yearned for her in a way that they never could, who disintegrated any
distance between Him and her with His own Son, who never considered her to be
an ugly duckling at all. She had been, all along, a young swan.
So, as the grown-up
little girl began to read scores of internet posts about women discovering that
true womanhood is what blossoms underneath what makeup colossally, skillfully
covers up, she fumed. As she began to hear simple stories of people meeting
their Creator for the first time and having conversations with Him as if such a
thing were supposed to be normal, she wilted with disappointment.
The truth is that the
little girl had been robbed. Perhaps her bucked teeth truly had been beautiful
after all. Did they really need to be fixed? Perhaps she hadn't needed to
colossally, skillfully cover up her face after all, because it truly was not an
ugly-duckling face. What had all that covering-up earned her? After all that
trouble, she had still endured 19 years of datelessness. Perhaps she had not
been good enough for the professor or la Cindy Crawford.
But she began to improve
without them. Her Creator had begun to restore to her the precious things in
her life that had been stolen from her. In His justice-bestowing way, He also
began to show her things that she had not seen before. She truly had met Him on
her own, and she truly had been having conversations with Him, and such a thing
was normal for her. And she began to develop a concern for the professor and la
Cindy Crawford, such as the fact that they both were employed for an
institution that is supposed to specialize in training people to help people
meet their Creator. And the hunch that the Creator seems to know who the
professor is when the grown-up little girl has conversations with Him, but He
doesn't seem to know who la Cindy Crawford is. The grown-up little girl began
to wonder if la Cindy Crawford had ever truly met her Creator. And if she
hadn't, the grown-up little girl now hopes that la Cindy Crawford will humble
herself to do whatever it takes to accept the disintegration of distance
between Him and her -- the disintegration that only His own Son made possible.
After all, la Cindy Crawford has many tools at her disposal of meeting her
Creator. Perhaps she simply needs to lay down her colossal cover-up skills.
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