Don't Touch The Curtain!

Ahhh, it's nice to be back in the blogosphere again. It's been a while (a LONG while) since my last post due to my life being flipped upside down in incredible, albeit time consuming, ways. During this wild ride that I've been on, I learned something that I want to share with you.

My whole adventure began years ago with a few "church wounds," as I like to call them, that caused me to want to hide. I knew I needed to be in church, but I didn't really want to get to know anyone or be involved in anything. I didn't want my kids to know how deeply I was hurt by "the church" and I certainly didn't want them giving up on God because of my situation. I decided to go back to the church that I had attended in college and the early years of my marriage. I felt remotely safe there because it is a large church. I felt I could be a regular attender, but still be lost in the crowd, so off we went.

Have you ever just wanted to be invisible? Yep, that was me.

I enjoyed the music there, though, and I am a singer so I felt drawn to the choir. I figured I could be in the choir and still not really form any deep bonds. It would be ok. Right? Ha!

Skip forward a few years and a few Worship Arts pastors and you find me now. If you did a before and after comparison of me then and now, you would not believe it was the same person. I have experienced true healing and forgiveness from the church wounds of my past and not only found myself in the choir, but also found myself singing on the praise team. Eventually, I ended up becoming the main worship leader for about six months.

Not exactly what you'd call "hiding," huh?

During that time, I was walking past one of the white curtains on stage and noticed that there was a hole in it. I was amazed at the size of the whole and the fact that you couldn't see it from the congregation. For some reason, I couldn't take my eyes off of it. It was as if a small, quiet voice said, "Remember that hole." Later in the day, someone told me a story about that curtain because it caught his eye as we walked past it. The story went something like this:

 

"Oh yeah, don't touch the curtain. One of our old worship pastors ordered these from France and they cost $5000! He told us never to touch them because they were very delicate and had to be handled with care so they didn't get any holes. As you can see, they got a hole in them anyway."

Can YOU find the hole?

Then that small, quiet voice crept back in and said, "AND YET, they're still in use and quite beautiful even though some people thought they had to be perfect to be used."

 

A ha! It was beginning to come together. The lesson was for me. Even though God had given me an incredible opportunity to bring him glory through worship, I never felt "good enough" to be up there. I never felt like I had enough talent, was a good enough Christian, or was healed enough to lead anyone. It was in that moment that I realized that I don't have to be perfect for God to use me for His glory.

That curtain has been put in many different shapes, stretched, pulled, and heated under hot stage lights, but it's flaws never take away from it's beauty. That sounds a lot like the way I imagine God sees us. As long as we are willing to be flexible, humble, and used by Him, our flaws will not limit the way God can use us. In fact, our flaws may be the very thing that makes someone else believe that God can use them in the first place.

The lesson here is this: Don't hide who you are or what God created you to do or be...flaws and all. And who knows? Your flaws might encourage someone else and inspire them to write a blog post like this one some day. The great thing about being "anything but typical" is not that we are without flaws, but that we allow God to use us the way He wants to in spite of (or even because of) our flaws.