Fairwell Bathroom

We have a lovely house, with lots of old-fashioned wallpapers and mature trees. The selling point for me was the pantry, and the counter-top that was big enough to roll out pie crust on. The real draw-back is the kids' bathroom. It works just fine, but it is just plain ugly. It has dark mauve paint, a yellow and tan floor, deep peach (like bad makeup) sinks and tub that are full of pits and rust spots, yellow-gray tiles behind the tub, and a deep peach toilet with forty-some years of hard water stains in it. All in all, a very depressing sight. But it's a nice big bathroom, and a couple of years ago I invested in navy rugs and towels, and ocean-themed accessories and shower curtain, and it looked much better. The ugliness is still there, but when you look in there now you're distracted from the "what were they thinking" original colors by all the navy. Seriously--what were they thinking? I cannot imagine.

Yesterday, Phil, our cheerful remodeler, began demolition on the room. The noxious tiles came down, the sinks are gone, the tub goes out today. But before that happened, of course, I went in and removed all traces of rugs and towels and accessories. So now when you look in, you see the original room in all it's hideous glory, plus gaping holes in the walls and the inevitable construction dust. I found myself suffering a momentary fear that it would stay that way. But within the next few weeks it is supposed to be transformed into a white and gray masterpiece of bathroomness, and all my lovely blue things will move back in.

Lately I've been thinking that I resemble that bathroom. In the last few weeks it's become clear to me that there is a lot more phariseeism left inside me than I ever thought, too much rigidness, too much actual disdain for others (not everybody, mostly annoying drivers!) which is just judgmentalism. I'm puzzled by this. I've always tried very hard to give everybody the benefit of the doubt in every situation. Most people regard me as an optimist, especially when it comes to matters of faith. It's long been a goal of mine to extend the grace I have received to those who (probably unintentionally) offend or slight me. I'm a nice person, darn it! So where on earth is all this coming from? How could I not know it was all in there? How could I possibly be a nice person with all that deep down inside? Am I all just navy blue camouflage?

Lately I've felt that I have the makings of an iceberg--nice clean ice showing, with a massive dark blob underneath, hidden from view and potentially dangerous. It's dismaying to realize that my sin tendencies are thriving, despite all of my wishes to the contrary. This is such a classic Romans 6-8 scenario. Between what I've read and what I've seen in recent weeks, these things happen to be at the forefront of my mind--but I'll bet they exist all the time.

So how to think rationally about this? How to get back my spiritual sanity? How to remodel? Well, the bottom line is that I can't remodel. Just like I had to hire Phil to transform the bathroom, I have to "hire" God to transform me. I just can't do it myself. And much as I'd like to have that nice new bathroom today we have to endure the process--there are no good shortcuts. It'll be done when it's done, and to be done correctly it will have to take some time and inconvenience and dust. Much as I'd like to be a paragon of Christian womanhood, there are no shortcuts--I have to endure the process, and even then the results might not be what I expect. I may have seen the plans for the finished bathroom, but I haven't seen the plans for the finished me. And the honest truth is that I'll go to my deathbed with a good chunk of dark ice still there. It's not that God is not an excellent remodeler, it's that I get in His way all the time. My deeply ingrained habits and thought patterns persist. God works on them faithfully, and I help when I can figure out what He's working on now, but it's going to be a very long haul, and I understand that the job won't be done in this lifetime. That's painful to admit, but it's true.

This is the kind of issue that makes me long so for heaven. When I get there, the dark blob of underwater ice will be gone. I'll appear as the brand-new-shiny-clean person who will finally be a finished work, based on Someone Else's finished work. It's not even possible in this life to imagine how very wonderful that will be, because we aren't capable of realizing how very horrible we are now. Even at my best I fall so far short of what I will be when I am in the presence of my Lord and Savior at last and forever. Fireworks! Feasts! Giddy celebrations! Praise and thanksgivings! All these things come to mind when I try to grasp the reality that will surely come. And I'll take one good long look at where I came from, and wonder "What was I thinking?".

"Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus."

Thanks be to God.

Love, Spud.