Scribbles in Sacred Places

When I think of Sunday mornings growing up, I think of absolute chaos amongst the loud background music of Christian Radio. From bed I could smell my mom's hair products and hear Chris Tomlin blaring through my door before I even got up. Four siblings, two parents, normally a few friends thrown in the mix from sleepovers the night before; it was mayhem. There were fights over whose clothes were whose, who needed the curling iron, who got to shower first. There was shouting and running around and a popping toaster and a constant warning of the time. We need to leave in fifteen minutes! We need to leave in five minutes! GET IN THE CAR NOW! Then there would be fights about whose turn it was in the front seat. And then we'd be flighting over lunch plans. We'd walk into church with perfect smiling faces despite the chaos with undertones of war that had just ensued minutes before.

Now, I am the mom that is ringmaster of the Sunday morning circus. I'm no longer the teenager waiting for my turn with the curling iron, but sometimes the attitude is the same. My husband and I have a system when it comes to getting our two toddlers and ourselves ready, but I still show up with a slight sweat at the crown of my quickly done hair. Always a little rushed, a little stressed. I deeply exhale; the girls are in their Sunday school classes, and I am in my seat next to my husband trying to hone in on what the Pastor is saying.

This week as I exhaled and focused in, the Pastor asked us to turn to Psalm 103. I flipped through those fragile, thin pages of my favorite Bible gifted to me by my mom (and to her by her mom) and landed on a page rich with David's prayers, colorful with my own highlights, and scribbles added with the individual artistic flare of my two-year-old. I normally cringe with annoyance and lack of control and slight regret at this sloppy sight. I should have put my Bible up. I should have grabbed that pen from her. All the thoughts of what I could have done to prevent her from destroying the perfectly underlined and highlighted pages of my Bible normally go through my head. The Word of God falls away, my own expectations for an image of perfection rise in place of it.

This morning something clicked though, as the Pastor read the passage and my eyes stuck to the artwork from my toddler (That clicking, or epiphany as some say, is normally just the gentle whisper and nudge of God). I ran my hand over the green highlighter scribbles, something she probably did after watching me read my Bible, underlining and highlighting verses that I wanted to remember. I felt the rare feeling that maybe I was doing something right. I, for the first time, felt grateful for those imperfect scribbles amongst the perfect Word of God. My Bible isn't tucked up on a shelf somewhere - unread and perfectly crisp to the touch. It's by the couch, on the table, on the ground; it's in my lap while I drink my morning coffee, it's next to my plate as we all eat lunch at the table. It's wrinkled from a few spills, colorful with notes, and torn in a few places. It's seen by my daughters and in reach of them every day. They watch their mom read the Bible. They see their mom highlighting and reading aloud and underlining God's Word. And they simply copy what they've seen, in their own little form of worship. The next thought I had was a more common one: what I had done wrong. I had traded moments to teach my girls about the precious Bible for a quick reaction of annoyance towards a place I had seemingly lost control of.

This Monday morning as I read, a day after that little nudge from God, my daughters were climbing on me and clinging to me as they played, with bedhead adorning their heads and cheerios in their sticky hands. My youngest started grabbing at the pages with her tiny fingers and instead of pulling away and saying, this is mama's, you don't touch in a stern voice like I've done before, I took her hand in mine and smoothed it out over those precious Words of God. I said, This is the Bible. This is the story God wrote so that you would know He loves you. At this, my two year old leaned in and began softly touching the pages as well. Even though they don't know what Holy or Worship mean, I used those words as I talked to them about the Word of God.

Now, I'm not going to let my girls go at it with a color crayon in my Bible like a coloring book or tote it around the house free rein. But if my Bible ends up slightly scribbled in and wrinkled through natural causes, I know that my girls will know how important it is to have a Bible close by. Every imperfection within the pages is a sign of an open Bible. Slowly I'm learning that even where chaos and mess and imperfections are, God is there just as much as He is in the silent and polished moments. Maybe even more so.

So much of my life is messy and scribbled. I can try to be perfect; I can try to have a beautifully aesthetic Bible that doesn't contain the artwork of my toddlers. I can try to have a totally peaceful Sunday morning before church. But if a false sense of control and image of perfection is the goal, then it sounds more like an idol I need to dethrone. An expectation of flawlessness leaves me disappointed when my expectations aren't met. This disappointment only gets in the way of authentic, teachable, growing moments within myself, and for my daughters.

I'm so glad that my parents didn't forsake going to the church because of the hectic morning that preceded it, sometimes chock full of sinfulness. We could have had slow, peaceful Sunday mornings, all rolling out of bed on our own time, making pancakes and doing our own thing, attending church every now and then. Less noise, let chance of arguments. But then I wouldn't know the importance of coming as I am, of coming to God despite the mess, of coming to God within the mess, of coming even when it's hard. I wouldn't know that He simply wants me to draw near to Him, especially in moments of mess and mess ups.

I am so thankful I don't need to draw near to Him, polished and pristine and perfect. I'm thankful that His perfection is enough to cover me.