Confessions of my Yeahbut

This week several friends shared link to a sweet video about a man with visible disability who owns a business. In the video we see him doing the things he does best: encouraging, hugging, speaking love into people's lives. This business is a dream fulfilled for him. It is definitely a feel-good video. 

Then my Yeahbut kicked in, the part of me that questions things, that pokes around at the surface to find the underside. Sometimes I discover the ugly beneath the beautiful. Sometimes I discover the beautiful beneath the ugly. One thing is fairly certain: There is always more than meets the eye.

This time the Yeahbut proposed, "Yeah, but I bet he doesn't really run it, he's just the face. I bet that there are people propping him up, doing the serious work of management, administration and production, all those real business matters. He's just the face. I bet Daddy set him up in this so that he can have a sense of purpose, so he can have a fulfilling job. I bet Daddy has real business people surrounding his son. His son just looks like he's running the place." 

Those are pretty nasty thoughts for someone who works in the world of disabilities and special needs. Go ahead. Spit on me. It gets worse. I've had similar thoughts sometimes about the clips of a kid with autism scoring the winning points in a game or a guy in a wheelchair being pushed across the finish line by his brother. I love these videos and share them with others, but the Yeahbut kicks in more often than I want to admit.

Today God did not leave me in the Yeahbuts. He took me further. He let me see something rich about Himself.

Isn't this what my Abba does for me? I have a certain composition that He gave me. To many, including myself, the most obvious parts are weakness. He gave me this set of physical, emotional, intellectual DNA and has seen what I can and cannot do. He has "set me up in business" and provided all sorts of supports around me to prop me up in my weakness, to enable me to feel a sense of purpose, a reason to get up in the morning, an opportunity to demonstrate love.  I look at at the good parts of my life and occasionally think, "This is great. I'm doing XYZ," when actually I'm just seeing the token surface of a huge team of truly skilled people who bring their strengths to do what I only dream I am doing. 

Like the young man in the video I watched more than once this week, I'll tell you that I'm getting to live my dream. Yes, that's true, but it is at great cost to my Father that I get to live that dream. He props me up with a variety of needed supports and delights to watch me thrive. 

Maybe He is the Yeahbut God.

Bringing the basin

Been talking with friends this week about foot washing. Each one who has participated in it has a significant and emotional memory connected to the event. Words like humility, service, worship, and love were repeated. Tenderness was evident in their hearts. J saw the daily opportunities to serve one another as a higher application of Jesus' intent than a ceremony. L struck a deep chord with me as she reflected, "I knew how Peter felt when he tried to refuse to let Jesus wash his feet, and I realized how much pride we have to release in order to admit our needs and let others help us." 

Foot washing seems to be another side of the coin of confession, a picture of humbly cleaning another's soul.  Confession is bringing something from the darkness into the light, or acknowledging harm I've done, seeking forgiveness, and moving to repair it. Could foot washing be allowing another person close enough access to my life to help me clean up, to take care of an area that is hard for me to see or reach by myself? Can my spouse or my friend have the freedom to cleanse a part of me that I have not washed myself? An area of my body or of my soul? Or am I insulted by the thought? Do I, like Peter, recoil from the approach of one who would touch me that way?

We were not in a theological debate. We were talking about the heart, which is where Jesus seems to do His daily work, touching each one at their point of need and applying the theology as only He can.

Please, God, open my eyes, my ears, my heart, to the truths You were communicating in this tender act of Jesus in His last days.