(Not) Ashamed and sewing fig leaves

So, we decided to get out and play on Friday.  A friend was participating in a historic reenactment for the 150th anniversary of the battle at Antietam.  Saturday Francis was gone to presbytery all day and I knew we were having a house full on Sunday, so I washed, cleaned, scrubbed and cooked for a few hours, and then I decided to leave the upstairs in shambles in lieu of playing in the sandbox with this little girl.

And then I decided to help these little girls ride their new bikes.

And I left some of the housework until after they were in bed.  Francis got home late, but I got done getting ready for sunday around 10 pm, but was thankful for how I had prioritized the day.
You see, I've been practicing a few refrains in my head.

People are always the priority.

and

my children don't need a housekeeper.  they don't need a cook.  they need their mom.

And then Sunday came.  We got home from church around 1pm, and Levi was starving.  Because the big belly needs to be fed, and it had been 3 whole hours since he had eaten.  Yes I was appropriately sympathetic to his red, tear stained face even though I may have told him he was being a little over-dramatic.  "I'll just run upstairs to feed him while Francis got the chicken on the grill." I said.  Everything else was ready - just needed to be transferred to the table.  As I lay on our bed feeding, I heard, "Can I just use your pack 'n play to but Lizzie down?"

And suddenly my play from yesterday seemed foolish.  My goals of people faded with the knowledge that someone would see.  My terrible upstairs.  The clothes and books on the floor.  The laundry basket waiting for clothes to be put away.  I was exposed.  Enter sinking feeling.

Francis has been reading a book, and while he's only ready the first chapter, he introduced this as our dinner discussion.  He said, "The author says that shame is all around us, pervasive in our culture."  

Shame.  Really?  Shame is defined as, "A painful feeling of humiliation or distress caused by the consciousness of a wrong or foolish behavior."  A friend commented that we often feel ashamed because of a perception that everyone else is enough, and we're the only ones who are measuring short.      And this isolates us.  Satan uses it to cause us to maintain these illusions for people.  And "Illusions are dangerous things for they have no flaws."  We will share up to a point, but please don't dig too deep or you will see what a guilty mess I am.  I realized that I am good about showing people my main floor, but don't come upstairs :)  And the facebook pictures I see may not reveal that behind the happy picture, there is a mom that is struggling.  

And then I thought of Eve.  And how after the fall their nakedness was exposed, and they were ashamed and they hid.  Enter sin.  Enter shame.  This feeling is centuries old.  We know our guilt.  We try to sew fig leaves to cover up.  We hide from God and from each other.

And then God sought Adam and Eve out.  And the Lord God made for Adam and for his wife garments of skin and clothed them.

And he clothes me.  The first God-given coverings required a sacrifice, pointing to the ultimate sacrifice.  Pointing to a merciful God who makes provision for his sinful, inadequate, naked people.

Praise God!  I will never be enough, but I can't be.  May I not pretend to be enough for the little one who is currently brushing my hair, but help me to point her straight to her Savior!  Help me to show people the upstairs of my life, in order to quickly show them where our sufficiency comes from. To remind each other that God's power is made perfect in weakness.

We are never enough, but God will always be.

Here's a great read about God regularly giving us more than we can handle
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