Pilgrims, Strangers, and Wanderers

Home is a name, a word, it is a strong one; stronger than any magician ever spoke, or spirit ever answered to, in the strongest conjuration. -Charles Dickens

When I was younger, before the days of CDs and MP3s, my brother and I listened to dramatized stories on old records or cassette tapes, stories we would play and replay until we knew them by heart and could repeat the lines along with the characters. Fortunately, as we exhausted listening material, they continued to make more, and at some point we acquired the audio version of the abridged Pilgrim’s Progress, part two (we read the book version for part one). The allegory was so lengthy we eventually just replayed our favorite parts, usually the tapes from about the middle of the story; the most exciting parts, we felt, were the parts when the pilgrims were fighting giants, though other parts of their travels and travails merited occasional listening.

 Oddly, it is one of those “other parts” that is one of my favorites now. In the series, on the last cassette, Jim Pappas adapts Bunyan’s ending by quoting Ellen White in words that have always been etched onto a little plaque on a shelf somewhere in my mind. After the narrator paints a word picture of the peaceful land the travel-weary band finally arrives at near the legendary river, he proceeds in his scholarly voice to intone: “On those peaceful plains, beside those living streams, God’s people, so long pilgrims and wanderers, shall find a home.”

Home. By my estimate and memory, the number of residences and moves I’ve experienced totals up to somewhere around 23—the same number as years I’ve been alive. I don’t even know what to call home anymore, so anywhere I stay at for any length of time starts to get referenced as “home.”

What does home mean? It’s one of the first things we ask complete strangers when we meet: “So where are you from?” or “Where’s home for you?” Home. We all know it’s important. It’s part of our identity, the place we claim as ours.

Despite its importance, “home” is difficult to define. I not always sure if it’s quite the place or the people there or maybe it’s a combination of the two, but I feel like it must be related to happiness, security, and stability—anything less just wouldn’t be “home.” And so we long for it, whatever it is, and everything it embodies.

“So where are you from?” asked a gentleman I met at a hostel while backpacking through Europe with my husband, more or less homeless. At a loss, I explained with a smile that I don’t really know—mid-west U.S.A. is the closest I can get. “It’s not where you’re from that matters…It’s where you’re going,” he penned on my crumpled manuscript of signatures I collected as a souvenir of my travels.

Maybe it wasn’t exactly an epiphany, but I found a moment of clarity in his words. It’s okay if I don’t know precisely what to call home, if I’m not sure where to say I’m from, because I do know the part that matters—it’s where I’m going. I'm a pilgrim, not a homeless drifter. I have a home. It’s the place I heard described eloquently by the narrator in his scholarly voice while I lay on the floor of half a dozen different houses, listening to the cassette player, while my brother and were growing up. “On those peaceful plains, beside those living streams, God’s people, so long pilgrims and wanderers, shall find a home.”

Strong.

It may well be the thing we most hate to love in America. Everyone praises it and extolls its benefits, but no one wants to actually do it. The majority of the adult population energetically writes it on New Year's resolution lists, only to find no energy left to actually follow through. You know what I'm talking about: Exercise...going to the gym...working out...becoming more active.

Magazines tell us why we should love it, and we know we want to, but after putting so much effort into acting like we aren't jealous of those annoyingly fit slimsters* who easily jog endless miles, somehow there just isn't any energy left to get out and go to the gym. And even if you do somehow work up the motivation to drag yourself into a room full of buff, compact, human energy bullets who blithely push around more pounds at once than you have moved in the last few weeks combined, the sheer depression resulting is likely to haunt you the next time you think of darkening the door to that jungle of muscles. No wonder everyone prefers going on a diet in America instead of going to the gym--it involves less action in general and zero interaction with those depressingly fit and muscular ones who make you feel like gorging on an entire bucket of donuts. With ice cream on the side.

This week, finding myself to be one of those Americans who wants to work out but doesn't really want to exercise, I went to the gym for the first time in months. Normally I rationalize myself out of this because I work with David doing landscaping and general yard work and, therefore, assume I'm getting all the exercise I need. Also, I don't exactly need to lose weight, so it seems even less necessary. However, recognizing that--like most American jobs--our work consists of finding the easiest, most efficient way to accomplish the project with minimal effort, I finally had to concede that working outside every week doesn't necessarily equate to "working out" and that, since landscaping doesn't seem to offer quite the degree of physical torture that the gym does, I probably need more exercise.

Monday went well, and for that first day I was under the happy delusion that it was going to be easier than I'd thought. Though somewhat sore, I felt satisfied with my achievement and the fact that I could still move without moaning or experiencing overt pain. By Wednesday, something about the 75 lb. bar weighting my shoulders as I did squats made me suspect seriously that there might be a rebellion brewing not far under my skin. As it turned out, I've been limping up and down stairs and wincing at attempts to sit down for the last few days.

Being ridiculously sore and achy has reminded me, though, that there are other ways to exercise aside from going to the gym. As Paul wrote to Timothy, "...exercise yourself toward godliness." (1 Tim. 4:7) And if physical exercise is important for good health and strength, how could its spiritual counterpart not be doubly crucial to our spiritual well-being?

This week I realized that working out consistently could save me the pain of making my muscles get reacquainted with exercise, and that building strength won't happen without some intentional effort. Ordinary daily work is good, but sometimes it's not enough. In the same way, I suspect, godliness won't just happen to us. Sure,  instead of exercise we might prefer to go on a spiritual diet and avoid the bad stuff, but that alone won't give us the strength of character that we need as much as Timothy did.

I hope you'll join me in the spiritual gym to work with the Master Trainer. He knows where we are weak and just how to make us strong.

"Only be strong and very courageous, that you may observe to do according to all the law which Moses My servant commanded you; do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left, that you may prosper wherever you go." Joshua 1:7


*Yes, that might be an imaginary term, but you know who they are.

Red-Light Syndrome

Some people text at red lights. Others mutter impatiently under their breath, look for something under the passenger seat, or pass along ageless wisdom to the kids in the back seat, such as “The more you ask ‘Are we there yet,’ the longer it will take us to get there.” The list of possibilities is endless.

My own personal stop light pastime is watching the other vehicles and their drivers around me. This, which I have discovered is also a common pastime for others at red lights, has yielded other observations of dubious relevance and led me to believe that one could learn a great deal about humans simply by analyzing our driving habits (and I am not solely referencing their ability to reveal those with anger issues).

I was spending a blazing hot summer day in Springfield behind a red light. Actually, not the whole day, but clearly everyone else wasn’t as at peace with the A/C blasting and music flowing while they waited for the light to change. I watched the lane of traffic stopped to my right as the car behind the first car in line rolled forward, closer to the other’s bumper. Looking up at the light, I noted that it was nowhere near our turn; I glanced back at the right lane. Behind the second car, the third car rolled up a few feet as well. Not to be outdone, the car behind it immediately moved up as well.

The car in front of me rolled forward. I almost let off the brake. By this time it had occurred to me that this rolling-forward-at-stop-lights phenomenon had never occurred to me before. Somehow I never really paid attention to it—I just tended to roll forward too. Now I was puzzled as to why, since it struck me as completely illogical.

Why roll forward? It won’t get you through the light any faster. In fact, closing the distance between your car and the one in front could be a really bad idea if a car coming up to the light happened to rear-end you…and there goes the bumper of the car ahead of you. I really can’t think of any good reason to roll forward at a red light, and yet most of us do it. Consistently.

Apparently there is a good reason that Jesus is called the Good Shepherd, making those following Him His "sheep," like the woolly little creatures that follow almost unquestioningly. We have some nagging, innate need to follow after what we see. Whether that means following the example of the cars around us at a red light, getting an iPhone, pretending to hate Justin Bieber, or whatever else is currently the popular thing to do. Even a group of the most anti-conventional rebels might as well be carrying a banner declaring, "Let's be different--together!" The urge to follow something or something is almost impossible to resist, and while many are eager to stand out, most are reluctant to stand alone.

The question, then, isn't so much if you will be a follower. The question is what will you follow. You can follow what you see, what is popular, or what is familiar. You can follow what is wrong, what is right, what you're unsure of. You can follow the world or Christ.

Whatever you follow, remember the Red-Light Syndrome--when you follow something, the ripple of your influence makes you as much a leader as a follower. If you move forward, chances are that others will follow your example as well...and that doesn't just apply to red lights.

Under a Rock

"You don’t know what the Muppets are?! Have you been living under a rock?”

“P!NK, you know, like…‘Glitter in the Air?’ No?! Have you been living under a rock?”

“Jim Carrey, you know, from ‘Dumb and Dumber’…Oh, right, you’ve been living under a rock.”

“You know there’s this Family Guy episode where…Never mind, you wouldn’t—I forgot you live under a rock.”

Sometimes I hear that phrase about living “under a rock” several times in the same week. I find it amusing, and sometimes I just answer “No, I don’t know…I’ve been living under a rock. It's okay, you can call me an ingénue.” Then I smile while I wait for them to decide whether or not to ask what ingénue means.

It’s true, I still can’t quite remember what Muppets are, in spite of the fact that I’m sure at least three different astonished people have described them to me. I couldn’t name a single song by the Backstreet Boys, haven’t seen Grease, and never did get fractured fairytales since I’m not sure how Cinderella let her long hair down so some handsome prince (who was a frog before she kissed him and Princess Aurora) could climb up and bring her back her slipper, which the Seven Dwarves returned after it was found by Little Red Riding Hood…or whatever happened. Those stories never made it into our library of books or videos when I was growing up. If any of that suggests that I have been living under a rock, then yes, I guess I have.

Granted, I’ve picked up a lot more pop culture in the last few years—in fact, I’m pretty sure I could sing along with the radio at least once every half hour if you put it on scan. These days I’ve seen a lot more modern media than I even care to, but none of it has convinced me that I missed out on anything growing up “under a rock.” Occasionally I just wonder if kids today are aware that rock can actually reference a hard object found outdoors as well as a music genre…let alone know how to spell genre.

I don’t mean to criticize all the kids raised with all the knowledge that I freely admit is foreign to me; I fault them for nothing except perhaps faulting me for not knowing the same things they do. Really, I simply want to reassure concerned parents that their kids won’t necessarily grow up hating them for having raised them under a rock. In fact, they might even be grateful for it. I am.

See, my parents didn’t raise my brother and me watching Barney. We watched Janice’s Attic, where I learned what caused condensation, what a kimono was, and that if Jesus made even the elephants to be kind to each other then I could be more thoughtful too. We didn’t read Cinderella, but I still know the names of dozens of missionaries and great men and women—Mary Slessor, John Paton, David Livingstone, Josephine Cunnington Edwards, Moses, Narcissa Prentiss, F.A. Stahl,  Joseph, William Booth, Wycliffe, Roger Williams, Corrie Ten Boom, Uriah Smith, Eric B. Hare, Martin Luther, Esther, Daniel Boone, John Bunyan, Joan of Arc, the Wesley brothers, Ellen G. White, Abraham Lincoln, Adoniram Judson, Johann Sebastian Bach, and Jesus Christ—because I read their stories or listened to their dramatized biographies on Your Story Hour. We didn’t sing along with Britney Spears, but we did sing this song at church called “The Wise Man Built His House Upon the Rock.”

So when people ask me if I’ve been living “under a rock” I have to smile at the irony. My parents weren’t raising me to be living “under a rock;” they raised me to live on the Rock. Sure, they made plenty of mistakes and didn’t raise my brother and me in some blissfully picture-perfect family that could probably find its simile in some TV sitcom I’ve never seen, but I can’t regret for a minute the many things from which they sheltered me, all in an attempt to build the house of my character firmly on the Rock of Ages. Every positive aspect of my life I can trace back to the foundations laid in my upbringing, foundations that could have been built on the world’s shifting sand, but instead were painstakingly grounded by my parents on the unmoving Rock, the Cornerstone many builders are still rejecting (Acts 4:10-12).

If you’re a parent, I want to reassure you that building your children on the Rock is worth it; at least, I’m so grateful that my parents took the effort. If your parents raised you in such a way that you occasionally get asked if you’ve been living “under a rock,” I hope you smile and aren’t at all embarrassed by it. After all, someday—when the Rock cut out without hands returns to bring this world to an end—no one is going to ask you how many episodes of The Simpsons you missed out on growing up.

Living under a rock? No. Living on the Rock? I pray it will always be so.

"My Christianity Sucks!"

“My Christianity sucks!”

It was a moment of supreme transparency, and I couldn't help but feel a kinship with my friend's sentiments. Several years have passed since that conversation, and that’s the only sentence I recall from it, but those words sunk down deep. Though I'm reasonably sure I've never expressed it quite that way, there have many days when translating my soul’s spirituality into electric impulses would have transmitted the weakest of vital signs. If there had been some device to electronically connect my heart to the keyboard of my laptop, Microsoft Word would have received very little communication. In fact, it probably would have typed just one sentence: My Christianity sucks!

Perhaps you've never felt that way, but I would be bold enough to guess that at some point, during some spiritual dry spell in your life, you were tempted to doubt the validity of your whole experience as a Christian. You know the time. Maybe you put on your church face and no one was the wiser, but when you peeled it off in the mirror at home after the sermon there was that vacuous stare from the eyes on your soul. You didn’t think your prayers would get past the ceiling, even if you could think of anything else to say. You didn’t voice, “My Christianity sucks.” But you felt it.

If you’re hoping for some cushy, feel-good , “this too shall pass” dénouement for the “My Christianity sucks” crisis, you will have to look farther than my blog. I don’t have that kind of solution to write for you because, when you are in that valley, some glib, poetic, philosophical resolution is almost entirely useless. “My Christianity sucks” rarely resolves with beautiful, dramatic closure.

One thing kept coming back to me, though, as I pondered my friend’s exclamation: “My Christianity sucks!” The word my. Is it your Christianity? Could that be the problem? My brand of Christianity could be lacking if I acquired, designed, and fitted it on my own. No wonder it sucks—I suck at creating beautiful things out of the unlovely. But wouldn’t you know…God doesn’t. He’s a master at that.

Does your Christianity suck? Maybe it’s time to exchange it for Christ’s brand of Christianity. Throw out all your failures to attain, all your notions of what you must do, and be an empty vessel for Christ to fill. After all, that’s what He is waiting on anyway.

Yes, it’s harder to do than it sounds. It’s humbling to plead with David through the darkness “Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from Thy presence; and take not Thy Holy Spirit from me.” (Psalm 51:10) But it’s certainly better than wearing the façade of your Christianity, hiding behind some past spiritual high and hoping you can revitalize it before it withers. Just let go of it, and ask Christ to give you a new Christianity—His version of Christianity. It may actually be more demanding than yours was, but it will also be more rewarding and less fickle. Take His yoke upon you…and you will find rest for your soul.

False Advertising

I get so annoyed by things that are advertised as something they are not.

My scotch tape dispenser proclaims “invisible” tape...and I always thought invisible meant “not able to be seen.”  I would suggest they try terming it translucent, but they are probably still working on making it invisible so renaming it might put a damper on progress.

Then there is the beauty parlor that offers a permanent for my hair. Oddly, I've had close to ten of those permanents and none of them were. Seriously, isn't that false advertising?

I must be the only one who has stared at a wrinkle in a purportedly “wrinkle-free” shirt and said, “Okay, what are we going to name you since you're not supposed to be a wrinkle?” Actually, I haven't said that, but it seems like a fair question for a wrinkle-free shirt that has more wrinkles than a pug.

While we're talking about calling things what they're not I am not going into Taco Bell's “Mexican” food offerings, but only out of respect to my friends who oddly enjoy its...er, hmm...fine cuisine. Or Chinese restaurants that serve French fries and play country music (yes, I have had the misfortune of encountering numerous such establishments). The list of false advertising that I’m not going to address could go on and on. And on.

I wonder if God has the same annoyance. Does it bother Him to see things and people stamped with the description of “Christian” when, in reality, they don't merit the title? If the performance doesn't validate the claims, it sounds suspiciously like false advertising to me. And I think I might be guilty at times—sometimes I might be more of an invisible Christian than Scotch can make their tape. And hair permanents are really no worse than I am about maintaining a lasting transformation. As for Taco Bell's scrumptious “Mexican” food...well, can I complain if it's not authentic? After all, I call myself a Christian—but there are times when I am sadly unlike Christ.

This seems to be a primary complaint of many who object to Christianity—it’s the hypocrisy, our religious word for “false advertising.” I’ve heard many people say, with some sort of accomplishment, that they are bad—but at least they don’t hide it under some veneer. In fact, there seems to be a lot of virtue associated with accepting your inadequacies instead of trying to alter them.

I beg to differ. That makes about as much sense as applauding those clothing companies for shifting their advertising to “We Will Not Lie—Our Shirts Wrinkle Stupendously!” or “Wrinkle-Free is for Wimps—Get the Ones That Wrinkle!”

Instead of renaming wrinkles maybe it would be better to just actually be “wrinkle-free.” The solution isn't to call myself what I am, but to become what I call myself. In life we can either pretend to be something we’re not, just accept what we are and demand accolades for the virtue of being transparent, or start producing products to match the description, so that the advertisement is justified. Sadly, too many of us, Christians included, find the first two options more appealing because they seem to require less effort.

Let’s not forget, though, that we don’t have to do the work alone. It is Christ working through us to transform us, and He promises that “He who has begun a good work in you will complete it” (Philippians 1:6). I’m glad to know that not only do I not have to settle for my weaknesses, but Christ doesn’t leave you or I to do the work alone. He will transform our characters into authentically wrinkle-free Christianity. 

Your Local Garbage Dump

While picking over the remnants of some ancient writings of mine, I found this story and thought it might be of interest...       

          I picked my way gingerly past mounds of fly-infested garbage towards something that could only be called a house in purest flattery. Actually I would call it a dump in the form of a trailer-house. The odor greeting my nose confirmed that my eyes and ears had correctly reported dogs and cats in abundance. Honestly, the aroma was about to knock me over. The “door” of the “house”, which I suspected might formerly have been capable of latching decades before I was born, was pushed open to reveal a happy colony of roaches going about their business in the door frame.

            A stained and wrinkled face greeted me in the doorway. Dirty hair hung around a little old woman’s face as she stared at me behind cloudy glasses. A dog lunged past her and through the screen-less screen door. Betty * and her retinue made quite the welcome party.

            Smiling, I held up a bag of food.

            “Hi, Betty,” I said as she took the bag. “I was just bringing you some lunch. Is there anything else you need?”

            This was not my first visit to Betty’s hovel. Ever since the week before, when a customer in my mom’s restaurant where I worked had told me about this poor woman’s living conditions, I had been delivering whatever I could to supplement her diet of bologna and coke.  The sights I had seen (and odors I’d smelled) on these daily deliveries defied any level of poverty I could have imagined in all my 17 years. I was amazed that anyone could live in the sort of filth and squalor I had seen only on TV before this.

            This particular day Betty needed to contact a lady who stopped by to run errands for her sometimes. She hadn’t been by in several days, and I wasn’t surprised to find that Betty didn’t have a phone. Cringing, I handed her my cell phone. One grimy hand pulled her hair aside as my phone was pressed to her equally grimy ear. For a fleeting moment I wondered when she had bathed last, and then recalled that she didn’t have running water.

            Betty handed me back my phone. Gazing off absently, she said, “She didn’t answer.”

            “What did you need her to do? Can I help?” I inquired, mentally scouring my cell phone with disinfectant.

            “I was going to have her bring my dog food into the house. The delivery man was scared of the dog and left it out there,” she said, pointing.

            I looked in dismay at the 40 lb. bag of Beneful near the road on the opposite side of her small “yard.” It had endured the morning’s rain shower—and unlike everything else about this place, it didn’t actually need the bath.

            “Oh, I’ll bring that in for you. It’s not a big deal. Where do you want it?” I volunteered. And carrying it in wasn’t a big deal; the bag wasn’t that heavy. Setting foot in a veritable garbage dump wearing tan jeans was my greater concern.

            After the dog food was relocated (miraculously, without thoroughly staining my jeans), I ran to the local gas station for a few items Betty needed. I had serious suspicions that the money she gave me with which to purchase those items was probably coated with more germs than would be needed for germ warfare on three continents.

            With a final check to see if there was anything else she needed, I waved goodbye to Betty and climbed back in my car. As I pulled out of the driveway, savoring a fresh, clean environment once more, I felt the same incredulous feeling that I always did after a visit to this poor woman’s “house:” How could anyone live, and be satisfied to live, in a place like that?

            From talking to the woman who first told me about Betty, I knew that the poor old woman had lived like this for years. There were people who might have helped her, but she was so accustomed to her way of life that the places that she might have moved she thought were “too good for her.” She was content to live in a run-down dump, leading a filthy, miserable existence with her mangy pets. It wasn’t such a bad place, she seemed to think. After all, this trailer was better than some of the other places she had lived.

            Pulling back into the driveway at my mom’s restaurant, I hurried in the back door and went immediately to wash my hands. I was still mulling over how a person could live in conditions like that, when suddenly I understood. Betty was satisfied with her living standards because to her they were normal. I couldn’t comprehend living that way because I saw those conditions as totally unacceptable—it just wasn’t normal!

            It was right about then that I saw a picture much larger than poor Betty and her filthy little dump. I realized that the whole world was made up people like her, just in a different way. And you and I, more than likely, are living in a worse garbage dump than she is. The problem is that, just like Betty, we don’t know it.

            Our garbage dump is sin in our lives. Before you stop reading because you think I’m referring to non-Christians, wait. I mean you—and me—all of us wonderful Christians who think we’re doing just fine. That is exactly where our problem lies, in the same place as does Betty’s—we believe our life is just fine, normal in fact. Somehow because the world is permeated with this kind of filth, we just don’t notice that it isn’t normal.

            King Solomon knew our biggest problem isn't choosing to do something blatantly horrible and filthy; usually it's just something that seems perfectly normal to our sin-blinded eyes. He say in Proverbs 14:12, “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death.”

            Our mind is the “house” we live in all the time, but do we really know just how dirty and full of germs it is? Like Betty’s house, I think we leave the door to our mental house wide open for all kinds of diseasing elements to enter by what we listen to and watch. We just let the cobwebs build by dwelling on thoughts we know are wrong or savoring feelings of envy, anger and prejudice.

            We have a lot of mangy pets running around like pride, dishonesty and selfishness, but we don’t see how filthy they make our lives. Instead we spend energy feeding these habits until they are healthier than we are. When I am critical of how Betty spends much of her stipend on food for all the little varmints crawling around her place, instead of putting it into some basic necessities like food, clothing and shelter for herself, I have to look at myself and realize how often I am willing to waste the gift of my energies on things that tend to feed those nasty habits.

            Did you ever notice how easy it is to give a few minutes to hunting down some piece of juicy gossip to pass along? Or maybe you tend to use energy carrying a grudge against someone who has wronged you. Perhaps a quick temper likes to raise its head frequently in your life. There are so many of these favorite little “pets” in our lives, and we like to justify them, thinking we have them so well chained up or fenced in that they won’t affect us, but we keep them around because we’ve become quite attached to these pet habits.

            The diet we like to feed our spiritual life is totally unbalanced, just as I know Betty’s diet was not very nourishing, but so long as we aren’t hungry we don’t notice that we have dined on “fillers” that aren’t going to make us spiritually healthy. As Christians, sometimes we are content to make our spiritual menu consist of whatever we learn at church, perhaps what we have been told in school or been taught by our parents; yet our diet is lacking the essential nutrients we can only get from daily personal study.

            I thought about Betty’s life compared to some other conditions…It could be worse. There are people with only a grass hut or no roof over their heads, and many people wouldn’t even have the money to get the bologna and coke. At least she has friends who will run her errands and help her if she wants it. That sort of reasoning makes her situation look better, and that is exactly what we like to do in our lives spiritually. If we can compare ourselves to someone with a worse “garbage dump,” we can even make our situation looks superior, not just a normal, average dump—Why no, ours is a Christian…dump. Yes, it is still a dump.

            At last I had finished disinfecting my cell phone, my purse, the steering wheel of my car, and, of course, my hands. But I still felt dirty, just in a different way. I realized that we all need much more than disinfectant. We need to realize that we live in a garbage dump, not a house. We need to see that our filthy animals, in the form of habits, are diseasing our lives. We need to discover that spiritual food must be nourishing, not just something to fill us. We need to recognize that flies and garbage are not supposed to be normal in our lives, and that spiritually we can be clean. We need to see that no matter how average we think we are, we might have the wrong idea of what is right.

            Only God can show us the true condition that we are in, and make us truly horrified to imagine that we could be satisfied with such a filthy situation. When we see the true standard of living, the way Jesus was, we realize how terrible our garbage dump really is. And our garbage dump may look like a normal Christian life to us, but does it meet up with the standard?

            So that day I began to see a little bit of Betty in me, and if you look hard you might find her hiding inside of you. She might make you think you’re doing just fine, but don’t be fooled by that mentality. You have a garbage dump too, and disinfectant won’t do any good as long as you think you are living in a normal house. Maybe it’s time we asked Jesus to compare our living standards to His and see how they add up.

*Not her real name