This post by John Lynch could just as easily have been written by yours truly this past Monday. Craig and I had a doozy of a fight on Sunday. Then, on Monday, we were asked to consider speaking at a conference somewhere next fall together as a couple (and with our kids). We got the message before we'd had time to reconcile and were still, as John put it, very fragile.
So fragile, in fact, that when E6 cut her chin open at Classical Conversations over lunch that afternoon I started crying. I don't normally cry when my kids get cuts. On Monday, I did. So fragile, in fact, that when the van started sputtering on our way home from the ER I started crying again.
I needed this message from John Lynch on Monday, but I'll take it today, four days later:
I will always display some measure of foolishness, pain and immaturity, because, well because, there is still foolishness, pain and immaturity in me! It will never nullify the veracity of “Christ in John Lynch”. I am fully righteous. I am fully fused with God Himself. I am fully a new creature. I am fully God’s adored, I have everything in me I need, I am a man unable to be condemned no matter what I get myself into…But I am still a kid. And I am not always yet willing to humbly trust God. There is still something in me that fights this health. And this new life is undoing stuff all the way back from the goofballs in my family line. Some of what I am living out will be better seen in my kids than me.
And if you catch me at any particular moment I may not look much healthier than someone without Christ. I can get just as loud or irrational as about anyone I know. But the magic continues on. God does His beauty. And Stacey, although she might not have admitted it that Thursday evening, is better and more authentically loved by me than 25 years ago. And so is everyone else I know, including my God.
It is imperative that we who carry this message, who dare take grace and identity into a religious culture of performance and self-willed sanctification, that we give ourselves the grace we promise to others. God is not ashamed, embarrassed or surprised by our junk. He just smiles, puts His arm around us and says something like, “Stick around kid. I’m growing you up from the inside out. I know what I’m doing and I’m proud to be doing it in you.”
So there.
Go read the whole thing yourself.
PS: Nothing helps communication restart in a hurry like having to decide whether or not to take a child to the ER and having to deal with serious car issues. I'm not even kidding.
