Imperfect Advent: A Kiddie Pool Christmas

"Uh-oh!" came my wife's words from the back bedroom where she was changing our young son, "I think the pool just blew away!"

Now, the first thing you need to know is that we aren't "those" people.  Oh, you know who I mean--you talk about them, too--don't deny it!  "Those" people are the ones who appear to live like a cross between June and Ward Cleaver and company and an Old Navy Christmas commercial--the ones who never have a wayward hair on the family pet, far less on their kid--and they certainly don't have any misbehaving kids.  In fact, their lives are, to every outward appearance, practically perfect in every way.  When I was a child, there was a family whom we knew as "those people."  I'm not sure we actually hated or despised them in any way; more like, we were in awe of them (or at least of the way they appeared to be): every hair in place, children perfectly dressed and with impeccable deportment--heck, they were so perfect that the wife made it know among her friends that she ironed her husband's boxer shorts and socks.  The man even polished the soles of his shoes--I mean, who does that??  We might not have despised them, but we certainly didn't appreciate their contribution to the community because, frankly, they made the rest of us (a/ka, the "normal people") look tacky and unaccomplished by comparison.

So, given that we're not "those people," Kristi's pronouncement didn't really surprise me a great deal.

The truth is, our life is imperfect.  It's full of unfinished, incomplete things.  It's cluttered with "I've been meaning to get to that" and "We've really got to do something about that!"  It doesn't shine like the "those people" of my childhood.  We used to say that the entire Those People family left a little path of clean in their wake wherever they went, sort of the antithesis to Charlie Brown's friend Pigpen.  Our life is happy, but it isn't spit-shined and white-glove tested.  When we have a Christmas party (sorry to tell you this, friends!) we always deem the first couple to arrive (you know, the ones who are perpetually thirty minutes early wherever they go) the "Oh @&*% They're Here Couple."  So, when my wife shouted from the midst of diaper duty that the plastic baby pool had blown off the carport and was passing by the guest room window, it just seemed like the next logical turn of events to me.  Racing outside in my Austrian felt mountain hat and bare feet, I slogged across the deep marsh of accumulated oak leaves outside our back door and lunged at the large flying object now making its way rapidly toward the open road a few hundred feet away.  Turning wildly on its axis, the wading pool took an unexpected turn and briefly came at me as if it had some vendetta for having been left since Summer in a state of "yeah, I need to get that moved," then swung again, veering into our neighbor's driveway.  As I finally nabbed my quarry, it very nearly took me down with it as my bare feet slipped on the wet grass, but at last I had the offending obstacle in hand and dragged it back to the carport.  Looking around for a way to secure it, I seized on the nearest available object of weight: the cooler full of water, left over from the Thanksgiving turkey two weeks earlier.  Planting the cooler of fetid turkey-brine in the pool, I happily re-entered our warm kitchen and announced to my very patient spouse that I had "captured the beast."

Yeah, we're not perfect.  But, I guess that's the point.  I mean, is anyone, really?

And yet, we go on pretending as if we were.  Not just practically, but spiritually as well.  And if you ask me, it's about time we were honest with ourselves and everyone else!  That lady at church who arrives on the neighbors' doorstep with a pie thirty minutes before anyone else knows their grandma died?  She probably has some struggles you don't see.  Chances are, if you poked around at her house, there are a few pots of dead petunias under her deck and her lasagna doesn't always come out right on the first try.  That neighbor who's lawn is always perfectly trimmed, with nary a stray leaf or blade of crabgrass? He might well trade his manicured fescue patch for a single memory of his father just once hugging him and saying "I love you, son."  If you went to the home of those "practically perfect" people, I'm willing to bet they have a "junk drawer" just like you and I, and they probably have unwashed laundry in the bedroom they seal off when company comes over.  But the lure of televised celebrity perfection has long-since rubbed off on the rest of us.  We feel the need to aspire to and attain the very best:  to have perfection on every level, to be fully organized, fully decorated, fully in control, and to never look anything but clean and calm and glamorous while doing so.  But to what end?  We try to present a spiritual perfection that portrays us as shellacked and polished, flawless and mature...but we're not.  We've been trained by seminars and sermons, ad campaigns and advice columnists to accept nothing short of perfection, physically and spiritually--but you and I, my dear reader, are messes.  I'd be surprised if your life is much neater than mine.

I'm a pastor, a spiritual leader of others; and yet, I have issues.  I'm easily disappointed and discouraged.  I'm far too tender-hearted at times, not nearly enough so at others.  I seldom get truly angry, but I'm often annoyed by things so minor they shouldn't matter at all.  I don't take criticism well.  I have experienced deep, haunting depression at times in my life, and I have abandonment issues that make me cling to my friends and family in a way that probably seems too "clingy" at times.  When I smash my thumb with a hammer, my outbursts could expand the vocabulary of many a longshoreman.  (I tend to create novel, "compound" curse words:  you know, the kind where you string 'em together, occasionally adding an adjective or adverb ending, just to make the grammar work?)  Oh, and I'm high obsessive-compulsive.  I correct grammar at every turn, and I seldom see a menu or a department store sign without feeling the need to remark on the deplorable state of American education.  I'm quite good at forgiving, actually, and when I forgive, I generally forget.  Perhaps if my memory were better for these things, I wouldn't keep getting into the same scrapes with the same people over and over again.  I'm a Baptist pastor, and yet I don't particularly like dress clothes.  I wear them for funeral and weddings, but I'd far rather wear shorts and flip-flops.  I counsel people on marriage, yet when faced with a disagreement with my spouse, I often find that I have much for which to apologize.  Oh, and another pet peeve of mine is dangling participles!

In short, I'm a mess.  And chances are, you are too.  But it's okay.  Jesus came for us messes!  Jesus came to earth for those who screw up and get mad and get frustrated and kick the dirt and cuss and occasionally whine when they don't get their way.  He lives here among us because He knows there will be nights when the kiddie pool blows away and I have to chase it through the neighbor's yard in my bare feet in freezing weather and I'm not happy about it.  God knows my life is full of half-done things, because I myself am a work-in-progress.

If I can't accept my own shortcomings, how will I ever encourage others?  I'm not making excuses for my laziness and inaction--I'm just saying that when I die, if my laundry's not folded and the trash still needs taking out and the yard is a little behind on mowing, but I've spent time loving others and encouraging some people to faith and sitting with the sick and hugging some people who haven't been hugged lately...I'm not going to see that as failure.

God loves the crippled and the inept, the lazy and the careless and the fearful and the the losers just the same.  It's probably not a coincidence that the angels first announces the Messiah's birth not to senators or kings or celebrities of any kind, but to fearful, doubtful, workaday men who smelled of sheep and unwashed clothing and manure.  Not a gilded palace, but a drafty, miserable cave was good enough for Jesus to come into this world--and I'm willing to bet the floors weren't swept and the livestock wasn't perfectly behaved!

As we celebrate the coming of Jesus, Savior of the Messy and Unfinished, why don't you try not to stress too much about the wreath you didn't get up on the mailbox or the turkey you know will be dry, no matter what you do to it?  Why not put aside your "to do" list, even for a few hours, and sit in the light of your half-decorated tree that leans a little to the left because the floor's uneven there and drink a cup of something warm and remember that this season isn't about you or me or about anyone else who's got messy, unfinished stuff.  It's about Jesus--and His stuff is always perfect.  And in Him, our stuff is made perfect, too.  God blesses the well-intentioned gift that didn't get bought in time.  He blesses the not-so-juicy turkey and the lopsided gingerbread men who look like they're scowling and the messy floors and the hampers of laundry and the dirty, unkempt children when we put aside our striving after perfection and just celebrate Him.  In fact, it is not in spite of, but in light of my messiness that Jesus shines; and when I seek Him, suddenly He provides all my needs and many of my wants...just as He has promised!

So this year, I wish you a Messy, Messy Christmas and an Imperfect New Year!