Keeping a Holy Lent: Day 19

Forget your perfect offering. 

There is a crack, a crack, in everything. 

That’s how the light gets in.   - Leonard Cohen

Nothing in this world is perfect.

Not you, not me, not anyone or anything.

And yet, we spend so much time trying to act like we have it all together.

I wonder why we do that.

I know you don't have it all together.

You know I don't have it all together.

So why do we pretend?

What is it about human nature that encourages us not to be our authentic selves with people?

I wonder if this is a human thing or a uniquely American thing.

In either case, it wounds the body of Christ.

When we presume that we aren't cracked, fragile human beings, we don't see one another the way God sees us.

Because here's the thing:

if I act like I've got it all together and I've made something of myself, despite the cracks I know I'm hiding, 

surely everyone else can too, right?

When their cracks show, that's just a sign of weakness or laziness or lack of motivation or a poor work ethic, or something!  It's definitely not that we're all fragile and we are all full of cracks.

I've been thinking a lot lately about my own struggles.

Lent is good for that.

I don't just mean my mental health; I mean I have taken this season to think about who I am at 41 years old and who I want to be, both now and in the future.

I've been thinking about all sorts of things:

my health,

my career,

my family,

my home, 

the books I read,

the television I watch,

the money I spend,

the money I don't spend,

the friends I keep.

Because it all matters.

I know that some day, probably not too far into the future, I'm going to look back on my life and wonder where it went.  I'm going to realize that it is time for my professional life to end and I am going to have to find a new identity.  I don't want to be surprised by that day.  I want to slip so seamlessly into the next chapter of my life that it barely feels like it happened.  I want to do that because I was prepared for it.

And so I begin now.

I begin thinking about the cracks in my life.

Not to repair them, but to examine them for what they're worth.

What the cracks teach me,

what they illuminate in me,

what they allow to escape.

No one wants to be broken and wounded.

But we are.

And it is high time we own that.