You Can’t Fake a Clean Heart
Several years ago when all of my children were small, I hired a sweet woman in town to help me get my house ready for a Christmas party. She wanted to come over and look at the house before deciding how much this job was worth to her. And something about that thought just completely freaked me out. I cleaned and decorated and desperately led her away from the closed laundry room door: “Oh, that’s just the laundry room. You won’t have to worry about anything in there.” When she rang the doorbell, I was so tempted to say, “Oh, hello, I had forgotten you were coming. Why, yes, our house always looks like no children live here.”
I wanted so much for her to walk in and think that this was going to be a breeze of a job. I wanted her to be impressed by my casually placed best foot forward. Despite the fact that I was slightly out of breath and a little wild eyed when I opened the door, I was hoping that she would perceive that I was terribly nonchalant about my precleaned house, as if it’s always that way. So, with a proverbial shove of some stuff into a closet (and possibly some literal shoving of stuff into a closet), I presented her with my most competent, cool, calm self, and I waited for her to be impressed.
She looked around my house politely. She followed me room by room while I said profound things like, “… and this is the kitchen.” She never made mention of the miraculous picked up and straightened quality that my house momentarily possessed. She didn’t seem all that enamored by my just-momentsago- scrubbed toilets. Just an hour earlier my house had been a complete shambles. If a robber had come in and ransacked the place, I doubt we would have even noticed. She smiled her endearing smile and quoted her price and we agreed on a time for her to come back and work her magic.
As I said goodbye, I shut the door and turned to look at my oddly neat house. And it suddenly reminded me of myself.
It reminded me of many a Sunday morning, when I yelled at the kids before church. When I nagged about shoe choice and teeth brushing and felt anything but spiritual. When I walked in the door of the church upset with my pastor husband over something silly. When I heard a discouraging word from a well-meaning church member. When I felt overwhelmed. When I was just about as ransacked inside as my kid-packed house on any given Monday afternoon.
Yet, I each week put on my shiniest pastor’s wife smile and I presented myself in church, with these falsehoods emitting from my spirit: “Why, yes, I do always have Jesus in mind when I make decisions. Why, yes, as a matter of fact, I am a harbinger of all goodness and grace and mercy.” All the while I know that the truth is that I am a mess. I have stuff shoved in closets just like everyone else.
Somehow we have all let ourselves become convinced that Jesus and the church want to see the cleaned up version of us. So, we smile, and we hide everything away that might reveal a little too much of where we really are. And because we don’t see or understand each other’s burdens, we can’t bear them together.
Even this very day, if I had let that sweet cleaning mama see the REAL way that we live, I have no doubt that she would’ve kindly wrapped an arm around me and said, “Oh, honey. You need help. I’m here for you.” It’s time to throw open some closet doors. It’s time to dig some stuff out from under the bed. It’s time to be honest with husbands and wives and friends and confidants.
The Christian life is hard, and we’re all struggling in our own ways. This road to Christlikeness wasn’t designed to be impressive.
It is meant to be humbling. It is built to be a reminder that our hearts aren’t beautifully decorated and ready for company.
They are dark and disgusting, and they desperately need to be cleaned up by the only One who has the power to change us.
We shouldn’t walk around trying to act like the job is done, like we’re ready to give tours now and show off just how good we are. It’s a long process, sanctification, and it ain’t pretty.
No one has arrived. Least of all me.
That dear mother showed up at my fakecleaned house a few days later and gave it an honest- to-goodness scrubbing.
When she left and one of us spilled something sticky on our perfectly clean floors, I sighed and remembered that nothing in this world is perfect except Jesus Christ, and I need Him desperately, even when I pretend otherwise.
He is cleaning me up, moment by moment. It’s a dirty job, but He’s the only one who can do it.
Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Psalm 51:10