Sanding

I spent the afternoon sanding down the front-pieces of my dresser drawers. This ought to have been an easy job, but it wasn't. You see, when I was 14, I decided it would be SO COOL to sponge-paint my bedroom three different colors of blue. And well, a plain white dresser just seemed so sad with all that glorious color, so I painted the dresser drawers as well. Six years later, I was in college and a family friend offered to repaint the drawers back to a respectable white. Unfortunately, because of my poor teen painting skills, and his realization that simply painting the drawers wouldn't cut it, I am currently the owner of 6 blue front-pieces that look like they've been whitewashed. For the last two years, they've leaned against the wall in the back of my closet, and I've been content to live without a pretty dresser.

But, at some point in the last few months, I've brought them out of the closet and laid them on my bedroom floor, convinced that if they annoyed me enough, I would be forced to take action. As I have no responsibilities until 6:00 tonight, my jet-lag excuse is wearing thin, and I was disappointed with today's television line-up, I gathered my supplies and began to sand down the paint.

It really is shocking how much effort it takes to being something back to its original state, and I couldn't help but make a comparison between the paint that was peeling off and my own life. (And, as this is supposedly a blog about theology, I suppose a bit of that wouldn't hurt)

As a freshman in high school, many things seemed like grand ideas. My first boyfriend, my first kiss, my first chance to decorate my room to my heart's content... (All of which terrified my parents) It's been 8 years and I'm still cleaning up the messes. I realized today that, where my heart is concerned, I’ve just been adding whitewash over the original bitterness. I would typically describe myself as only having bouts of bitterness, but I find that instead I've just become excellent at lying to myself, adding another coat of whitewash and moving on.

The paint peeled off, revealing the original white beneath, and I realized that I've been avoiding the sanding process in my own life, claiming my relationships as the one thing I don't need to get around to yet. I thought if forgiveness is like the sanding process.... is it really something I'm willing to do? Remove all traces of the good times and the bad and just, well, forget?

One of the few chapel messages I can recall from my Christian University experience was about forgiveness--claiming that we don't necessarily "forgive and forget," because the pain will be there and we have to learn from our mistakes. At this point, I think I'm going to embrace the sanding method--one in which my Savior sands me down and removes all the whitewashed coats of "I'm okay with it now" and even the underlying layer of bitterness. I'm at a point where I want to forget their mistakes and my own--I want to hear their names and have absolutely no reaction--I want to be free of the bitterness.

Now, that's not to say that I want to go back to the way things were before anything happened. I like who I am, I like that I'm growing into a godly woman. My dresser will never look like it's right out of the factory again; I wouldn't want it to. It has a fun aged feel (that's so trendy these days) and the hours working on it weren't wasted. My drawers weren't able to fix themselves--at no point in the last 8 years were they capable of shaking off the (ugly) paint I applied. I serve a God who is even now peeling off my lies and bitterness and getting to the heart of the matter. I know that one day I will be made new--the equivalent of me going and getting a brand new dresser. Until that day, I pray that small renovations continue to occur; sanding me down into the person Jesus sees me as.