So the challenge was, for a bit, to get comfortable with what I had spent a decade doing. The temptation was to sweep it under a run and pretend it didn't happen.
That was kind of hard to do. Even with church. As I had left church, we dressed up, sang hymns, had an invitation and two services on Sunday.
When I came back, people wore jeans, we sang songs from an overhead that weren't in a hymnal, there was no invitation, one service, and *gasp* people drank coffee in church. It was weird, but, okay. I can hang with this.
Not so easy to again identify with the people there. I wasn't like them. It was disconcerting, to say the least. By God's grace, I made friends. Good friends. Sister-type friends.
That was good. And they really didn't care that the fact that I had once been white cardigan and pink nail polish but it had faded to leather and black nail polish. Now I was some sort of odd concoction of the both of them.
That was good. The acceptance, I mean.
As I pondered this all yesterday, I had a strange thought. I wonder if my insistence on being {dressing and otherwise} different is a way of separating myself from those "normal" Christians. Eh, that's probably a stretch, but I guess part of me thinks that if I put on Dockers and Sperrys or a linen sundress and sensible shoes, someone might mistake me for a person that didn't have a decade of debauchery.
And I know there's a fine line here. I certainly don't want to advertise my plethora of sins. I don't want to encourage bad behavior. That's not true. I don't want to encourage sin. So I'm still trying to find the fine line between honesty and making people feel uncomfortable.
It kind of happened last week. There were a bunch of us singing some song I didn't know. Something about "My Father's House." I took issue with the song because it insinuates that in Heaven, there will be football. I looked at my friend, incredulously, and said, "I was assured that there would in fact be NO football in Heaven."
He laughed and commented that he couldn't believe that I hadn't heard that song before. "It's from the 90's..." he said.
"Oh, that explains it," I replied. "I was too busy dancing on bars to know anything about that."
He raised his eyebrows and appraised me slightly, trying to decide of I was serious or not. I didn't push it. No need to. But it's true. I'm probably not going to get any jokes or references to anything 90's-DC Talk, Rich Mullins, Michael English (I had to Google and see who he was and what happened to him) and I'm sure there is more. I'm slightly caught up on Rich Mullins, which is a great thing.
The flip side, though, is what got me started on all this. I opened the door slightly on what I've been through with a friend recently, and she unleashed with a flood of confession, feelings and desperate pleas for prayer. I was quite taken back, since I wasn't sure exactly how my tale of my past was going to be received. It provided her with some sort of reassurance that I wasn't going to judge or condemn her. Um, yeah, I'm really not going to do that. I'm going to take us always back to Scripture, but that's it. It was precious, though, for me to see this in action. I think it makes me feel "safe."
So I've continued to ponder how to continue on in this. To be used most fully by Christ, for the spread of His gospel and glory. To use it all, so that it won't be a waste. I know that it wasn't God's will, that time spent away from Him, but I also know that it made me who I am-able to identify with those that others would not. Not that this makes me better than some other Christ follower out there making a difference. Just different.
I'm not proud of those years, but I'm also learning not to be ashamed of them. Not promote them, but humbly tell of God's great rescue of me. Not make people feel comfortable about them, but felt reassured by my experiences. And listen, those years make me very secure in my walk with Christ. I've been out there, and I don't want to go back. I've lived not seeking His face, and I honestly don't have a desire to ever be there again. I lived through it once. That's enough.
So maybe I need to take my friend's advice and just file all this under "Grace" and be done with it. But that still doesn't feel right. I don't want to chew over this forever, but I'm determined to use it. How ever He leads.
I still prefer my black nail polish to frosty pink, but I do have a cashmere sweater. And it's black. :)
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