Cleaning House?

Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

I wrote this post ages ago, intending to start a series/discussion about dreams and their significance, then never posted another thing about it.

Maybe it was just a little closer to the nerve than I realized.

But I thought I'd take up that gauntlet again; part of the 'dare to be transparent' thing I'm working on. So I'll talk about a recent dream.

As in, day-before-yesterday. As in, I'm still chewing on it...

Now, truth be told here (and I've really not made any secret of it), house keeping is not my long suit. And, since I've started working, it's gotten even worse (realized just before lunch that today was my one-year anniversary of being an employee...). Anyway. The house is a wreck.

Well, in this dream, it was even worse than it is in real life. And I and my Sweet Baboo were looking at it and at each other, wondering how it had gotten so bad and how on earth we were going to get it back to presentable, when he looked out the window and saw a van from our church pull into the drive.

And a number of our pastors got out and headed into the house through the garage.

Panicked...shamed...horrified...exposed. Yet, on some level, I was almost glad that they saw me at the worst. I didn't feel like I had anything to hide anymore.

And they weren't at all judgmental. In fact, one of them got a bucket and a brush and knelt down and began scrubbing my kitchen floor. I was mortified, but she looked at me and said something to the effect of 'When you need help, you need help.'

The humiliation I felt turned into simply being overwhelmingly humbled.

Today, in staff prayer, our Pastor made a statement in which he said something to the effect of, 'We are not capable of cleaning up our own lives.' (wish I'd written it down!)

And I thought of my dream...the mess that I was incapable of dealing with, and how I had to humble myself to allow someone else to clean it.

Before Pastor called us together for corporate prayer, I had been writing in my journal about my frustration with dealing with my own character flaws. And I saw the connection; I can't fix my character flaws by an act of will; I have to yield them to God to reshape...cleanse...renew. And I not only have to be patient while He does it in His fashion, I have to believe that He is working on it even if I don't see any evidence of it.

I just have to continue to pursue Him.