The Hats We Wear.

From the end of the earth I will cry to You,

When my heart is overwhelmed;

Lead me to the rock that is higher than I.

Psalm 61:2

I’m a mom of 2 very “active” little boys.  And let’s face it, active is a codeword we moms often use for “crazy”.  Living in a foreign country, wife of a CEO, volunteer, hostess, clean freak, church everything-er, blogger, decorator, pretend-to-be-jogger … you get the picture:  There’s a lot of hats involved.

As busy as I can be, I know you, my valued reader, have some pretty insane days of your own.  We have to be a whole lot of different things to a whole lot of different people.  Hence, living our life in varying states of tired; never knowing true rest.

We’re Overwhelmed.

I once saw a video clip by Jenn Johnson, a worship leader from Bethel Church in California.  As she tells the story — In the car with her pastor, having just got off her flight, running to the next venue where they’d be teaching, she picks up her phone and puts out fires back home with her kids.  Arriving at the church, she says under breath,

“Mom hat OFF.  Worship hat ON.”

Her pastor turned to look at her and said:

“The problem is, you never should have taken the worship hat off.”

That stops me dead in my tracks.

I’ll tell you a secret that as a Christian I’m not really supposed to say.  I hate it when people challenge me with: “If Jesus were in the room right now, would He be proud of the way you’re acting?”  Because I’d really rather not think about life from that perspective.  Nothing gets under my skin more then when people are fake, or, for goodness sakes, when I catch myself in the act.

NO.  If Jesus were here doing life with me (and, let’s face it, He is), I’d rather not pretend to be the “Heather” I think He’d like to see.  I’d like to just be “H-Bomb Yoder”, as my husband calls me.  And I’d want Jesus to laugh with me at how impossible it is to sit for 20 seconds without someone needing something.  Cry with me because I feel alone sometimes.  Coach me on how to balance things better.  Tell me to go lay down for 30 minutes because He knows I desperately need a break.  Or have a glass a wine at the end of the day as we recap all the funny stuff the kids said.

And, yes, I would want to be better if He were around, but not fake-better.  Just BETTER.  That’s what’s in my heart to be anyway, and He already knows that about me.

I don’t scream because I like seeing myself get all “Mom Nuts-O”.  I do it because I’m still working hard at things in my personality and haven’t figured it all out yet.  Have you?

HE is the forgiver of our sins.  He’s the one who forgets them – It’s much harder for us.

When I find myself taking off my worship hat, while fumbling to put on my mom hat, or my wife hat, or my church hat…  I’d like to STOP and THINK.  Every one of these things will be easier if I keep my worship hat firmly on my head.  If I see spilled chocolate milk (which stains custom curtains, I can tell you) through the lens of worship, what would happen?   Or if, in my state of worship, I can see my tired husband not helping to clean-up aforementioned milk because he’s been cleaning up work messes for an entire company all day?  What would change?

The problem is we take the worship hat off, and then we fake our way through wearing the others.  

The book of Psalm is, to me, a book of about wearing your worship hat.  It’s filled with all the hard, all the great, all the processing, and all the believing that David did while he simply worshiped.  And he isn’t fake for a minute… flaws and all, God knows his heart, and He LOVES it.

“From the end of the earth I will cry to You, When my heart is overwhelmed; Lead me to the rock that is higher than I.”

So as you “do life”, sure, you can pretend Jesus is in the room with you if it helps.  But there won’t be any need to pretend if you are already at His feet in worship – at the rock that is higher than I.

And I don’t need to tell you how much better you’ll be and at doing absolutely everything else when you’re sitting squarely there.