Honesty, Masks, "Better than a Hallelujah"

My amazingly talented husband, Gregory, sang a new Amy Grant song yesterday at church called "Better Than a Hallelujah".  He thought he messed up and massacred the song, but I didn't think so at all!  I know lots of folks (not just me!) were blessed by it, and didn't notice any missed notes or flubbed lines that seemed glaring to him.  The song is beautiful and has beautiful lyrics and has been going through my head since he sang it yesterday.  The whole message of the song (or at least my take on it) is about how God sees and hears the cries of our heart and how they're beautiful to Him.  My favorite line from the song is "Beautiful, the mess we are" - that blows me away!  That God sees me and knows me intimately - knows how messed up I am! - and yet finds me beautiful. 

How often am I honest with God and with other people?  I mean, really?  You know how sometimes when people ask how we are, instead of being transparent and telling them, "I'm having a horrid day and am ready to strangle my spouse and/or my coworkers!", we say "I'm blessed and highly favored!" or we just say "I'm fine! How're you?"  Do we try to do that with God, too?  It's kind of an icky question because I believe in giving the sacrifice of praise - praising God in the midst of everything that's going on, even when it sucks.  Even when praising Him is the last thing you want to do!  When the bottom's fallen out and you're sinking, going under for seemingly the last time.  Those times when I press in and praise Him regardless are the times when He wrecks me and holds me the closest and let's me hear His heartbeat all the more clearly.  And that's all good!  But I guess what I was musing about today was how sometimes we're afraid to be real with each other.  How we put on these masks and show our shiny happy side.  How we're ashamed or afraid to let anyone know that we're hurting.  That we're human. 

But God knows all.  He hears the honest cries and moans and groans of our heart and they are sweet in His ears.  And they're sweet in the ears of our fellow laborers, too.  Our brothers and sisters who are toiling beside us as we try to walk out our faith are going through their own struggles and trials, but they're not too busy to lend a helping hand.  Or at least they shouldn't be.  And often when we're brutally honest with someone, it forges a stronger bond.  Those shared revelations can really cement a relationship because when you're real with them, it invites them to let their own mask drop and be real with you, too. 

I have several friends that I can be totally real with.  They've seen me at my worst and yet are still speaking to me.  They've seen me bawling and crying over minor things that I should've handled with ease.  They've heard me whine and complain when honestly I had nothing to whine or complain about.  And they love me, even so!  Would they still love me if I hadn't been so honest with them?  Probably, but the friendship is deeper and richer in my opinion because of it.  Because usually, if we're real with someone, it lets them know that they can be real right back.  It lets them know that we trust them enough to share the deep places of our soul.  Obviously, though, you should use a little discernment and not just open up and lay your soul bare for just anyone.  I"m not saying to be honest and transparent with the stranger in line at Food Lion, necessarily.  But you have to be the judge of that, I suppose!

It seems to me that wearing a mask all the time physically would get dreadfully tiring, and would make your head kind of stuffy (especially the heavy kind with lots of feathers).  Plus it would affect your peripheral vision, make it hard to see clearly.  I'm sure the same things hold true for emotional/spiritual masks as well.  I think it's only when we take the mask off and let others see our real face - warts and all - that we can truly breathe freely and see the world around us. 

So, have you heard the song?  How did it speak to you?

Ahhh...  Starbuck's doubleshot energy + coffee drinks.  In particular, vanilla flavored.  Awesome, awesome.  Tons 'o caffeine.  They're my new best friend.  Well, at least this morning.  Today is Monday.  Which means I am in Atlanta.  Which means I should have gotten a decent amount of sleep last night to make the drive to Atlanta a fairly safe one.  But alas, that was not to be.  I had the bright idea to spend the night at my folks house with the kids like we did last week to make my drip to Atlanta shorter and to spend some unhurried time with my folks.  Plus since Greg wasn't feeling good at all this weekend (throwing up and stomach cramps - please pray for him!) and since his mom (who surprised us by arriving a day early for her visit on Friday) wasn't feeling well either, I thought it made sense on so many levels.  This way, the kids would already be at mom & dad's so there would be no figuring out transportation or anything like that to get them there today.  And it worked really well last week when we tried it, so I thought, why not?  Why not, indeed.  Oh, let me count the reasons... 

First of all, last week I arrived at their house exhausted and just in time for bed.  The kids had gone down earlier and had spent the afternoon swimming and playing and so were exhausted, too.  We had our monthly Awakening Service at church, so I'd been to that and was still in the clouds after an amazing time of worship.  So getting Noah and thus me to sleep was a piece of cake.  I don't think either of us even moved during the night!  Yesterday, however, we had all 3 gone down together and had a wonderful afternoon, visiting friends and swimming and laughing and playing.  I was hoping that Noah would opt to sleep with Nana and PawPaw, but nope.  He chose mommy.  Which was fine, except I was thinking that I'd actually have the bed to myself for once (since Noah is a bed hog and gets that totally from his daddy).  So we start to bed at 9:00.  Finally get serious about it around 9:30, after lots of giggling and talking and a really long prayer time, which was very cool.  Noah basically wanted to pray for everyone at church individually and his memory was quite good!  So once we finished all that, I'm thinking we're good to go.  But nope.  He couldn't get comfortable, he was thirsty, he had to go potty, he needed to swap pillows...  ordinarily at home, I'm a lot more no nonsense and tough on him at bedtime (and it helps that Greg's there to help keep him in line) but since Anna was asleep in the next room (sans sound machine) and since sound carries well in their house, I was really worried about waking her up.  So instead of my usual tactics (which probably would have resulted in a spanking fairly early on), I tried to just stay calm and keep telling him to go to sleep.  (Yes, yes, I know that this was not being consistent with him, which is a problem in and of itself.  I'm not very good at this mommy business, so that's not surprising.  But as I said, I knew that if Anna woke up, I was totally sunk, so chose to go this route...)

My calmness lasted until about 10:35.  I tried to hide the fact that I was getting totally furious until about 10:45.  I don't remember what the final straw was, but it was probably either a kick accompanied by a whine or maybe it was a request for more juice or to go back to the potty.  Whatever it was, I jumped out of bed and turned on the lamp so quickly that I knocked it over, scaring Noah and calming me down somewhat.  But I was still pretty fired up and trying really hard not to yell and not to cuss and not to just generally make things a whole lot worse.  So I paced to the door and back a few times and whispered quite harshly to him about how it was long past time to be asleep, and how mommy had to get up really early, etc., etc.  As you can imagine, this had no effect, other than to cause crying and more whining about how he wasn't sleepy, blah, blah.  I texted back and forth with Greg 'cause I knew I needed serious backup and finally called him.  He calmed me down and prayed with me, which helped immensely.  So we settle back in, both of us calmer and after I apologized for "talking ugly" to him and getting his forgiveness (and him with a sippy cup with more juice, which Greg thought might help get him to sleep quicker).  Greg was right - by 11:30, he was asleep and so I drifted off as well. 

Fast forward to 2:00...  I'm dreaming about sleeping in a puddle of water.  No, wait.  I'm awake and am in fact sleeping in a puddle of water.  ARGH!  Noah hasn't wet the bed in ages and although he usually sleeps in a diaper, just in case, it's been dry in the morning for quite some time now.  Of course, none of that factors in extra juice in the middle of the night!  He's soaked, I'm soaked, the bed is soaked.  Sigh.  I get all of that cleaned up and finally get back to sleep, waking up every 10 or 15 minutes until about 3:30.  So when my alarm went off at 4, I about jumped out of my skin!  I was so tempted to hit snooze, but I know better.  I had to kick my snooze habit long ago because I abuse it badly.  So I stumble to the shower, after waking my dad and passing Noah over to his care (didn't want him to wake up by himself in "strange" surroundings).

So there you go - the sad saga of my sorry Sunday night's sleep.  Don't know why I felt the need to go into such detail, but hey!  Sometimes you just need to get things off your chest, know what I mean?  Maybe my next post will be more... I don't know, intellectually or spiritually stimulating, shall we say?  Or maybe it'll be something totally inane and idiotic and equally as detail-oriented as this one.  Feel free to NOT read these, by the way!  I know there are many more uplifting and encouraging blogs.  But since this one belongs to me, it's definitely going to have it's more mundane moments.   Variety is the spice of life, right?  And since I have the aforementioned Starbucks Doubleshot energy + coffee coursing through my veins this morning, inane and mundane chatter is definitely more my speed right now.  I almost feel sorry for my co-workers who have to actually hear me today.  You, dear reader, can simply close this window or surf to another blog.  They, however, are going to have to be in the same office space with me and have to hear my pointless musings at a fairly rapid pace.  I started to feel a twinge of remorse in advance for subjecting them to this, but thankfully, the feeling passed! 

Ah, Mondays!  Gotta love 'em.