I have a dangerous habit - late-night, in-bed reading. Some nights I've opened a book as one sort of person, and when I've gotten up the next morning, I'm an entirely different one. Why? Because God has used someone else's words to convince me I'm not who I thought I was.
Last night I went to bed an honest woman. This morning I got up a thief. I blame my author friend Connie Cavanaugh, for my sudden decline in character. In the chapter titled "Shame" in her new book, Following God One Yes at a Time, she tells this story:
When Connie was expecting her first child, she and her clergyman husband, Gerry, were flat broke. Someone had given them a well-used crib, which she painted, but she couldn't do much with the mattress. Lumpy, torn and saggy, it didn't seem a fitting resting spot for her precious newborn - even after she scrubbed it, duct taped it and wrapped it in a new blanket.
Around that time, Connie and Gerry's church hosted an event that required them to billet a team of youth. They bedded them down on new foam mattresses loaned from a sister church. Mattresses Connie realized would be almost a perfect fit for their baby's crib.
Before the mattresses were returned, the infant's crib had a firm new mattress, just a few feet shorter than the borrowed ones. Yes, before installing one in her daughter's crib, Connie had sliced a few feet from its bottom.
"I'll glue the end piece on and return it just as soon as I'm finished with it," she'd rationalized. "They'll never miss it."
Then came the call: "Are any of the mattresses we loaned you still there?"
Burning with shame, my friend said she'd look around and call back. While she was "searching" God gently reminded her of what she had to do: simply tell the truth.
"Taking the lid off shame to let in God's light results in the growth of beautiful things," Connie says. Thirty-two years later, the woman to whom she confessed remains one of her dearest friends.
After grinning over that chapter last night, I switched off my lamp and headed for sleep. Before I got there, something happened. Three images came to mind: a phone, a shelf, and a water hose. We'd found those things in some of the rented houses and parsonages the Preacher and I have lived in. Since they were there to be used, we used them. We also adopted them, sort of, because when we moved, they moved too - one by accident, the others by intention. Which makes me (for shame) a thief - oh, and a liar too, for pretending they were mine.
God's light gets under my skin too. And like Connie, I realize I too must let it in - one yes at a time.
Cya. I'm off to begin (again) making an honest woman out of me.
Say yes to God. It's also a dangerous habit - but very beautiful.
