I've got a lumpy rug.

I'm a happy person- generally speaking.  I like people and I love to be social.  I love having authentic relationships with people. I love so much about being with and around other people.  Love it! Do you know what I don't like?

Being vulnerable.  But I've learned that authentic relationships require vulnerability.  They require being humble, being bold, being thoughtful and being truthful and much much more.

They require being able to set aside our knee jerk reactions, our own sense of entitlement, and think in "We" instead of "me."  I feel blessed to have deep, authentic relationships with people.  But I don't do it right all the time.  There are times I sweep things under the rug and lately I realized my rug is getting lumpy.

So now I am doing the hard work required of authentic relationships (that I sometimes become complacent about doing.)  I have to pray for God's wisdom, I have to admit to wrongful doing and request forgiveness.  I have to have the hard conversations.   With God, with myself, with my friends.

Life is full of lumps and bumps, highs and lows, and the good and the bad.  The truth is the rug of life will always be bumpy and lumpy and messy.  Jesus tells us “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” John 16:33

It's my saving grace that He is in all of my mess, all of my lumps and bumps.  He can show me the way to walk, the way to talk, the way to be in every circumstance I find myself in and enduring.

The key is that I have to reach out to Him and let Him lead me.  I have to stop and breathe and remind myself that the first place I should run to when I am in trouble, or hurt, or have put my foot (ok-both feet) into my own mouth is to Him.  Jesus loves us with an all encompassing love.  He will put on us the path we need to be on.  It's rarely easy, but it's always right.

In my own journey of faith, I am finally figuring out that the issue of feeling like I'll never get it, is in fact, Faith in all of it's various stages.  God created me to feel that tension and I'm normal.  WHAT?
YES!  HOORAY!

I have a God size hole that only He can fill.  And He will fill it even when I miss the boat, or make a mess.  He fills me in my mess, He fills me in my glory, when I get it mostly all right.  He's just there.  Always.  Waiting for us to invite him into the minute details of our lives, to come into our living rooms and walk across our lumpy rugs.

I once bought a China cabinet on Craigslist.  I got it home and reached into a drawer and there was a verse written on it, one I find apt today:

The Lord is faithful to all His promises and loving toward all He has made.  Psalm 145:13

I can practice those things.  I'm just so thankful He does all of that perfectly and still comes to my messy house and loves me despite my lumpy rug.