My Sunday Worst

So I’m sitting in my car in front of the church. The baby is asleep in the back, I’ve already dropped the 2-year-old at the nursery with a whispered “I love you” and an apologetic kiss on the cheek, and the five-year-old is in Sunday school. I have retreated back to the sanctuary of my minivan (do I see the irony here? Absolutely.) to catch my breath and prepare myself to head back into church.

And I’m wearing a T-shirt, leggings, and flats. My hair is a frizzy mess, half of it pulled back with a too-tiny clip which was all I could find in the craziness of the morning. 

Hi, I’m Jackie. The pastor’s wife.

But wait, you say. Shouldn’t you be dressed nicer than anybody in the building? You ARE the First Lady of the church... where is your Sunday best?

My “Sunday best” is laying in a heap on the bed, damp with sweat from wrestling said 2-year-old on the living room rug for 10 minutes to get him dressed. I was hit, kicked, nearly bitten, and almost completely lost my temper. The pretty earrings (which I rarely wear these days being a stay-at-home mom) were slung back into my jewelry box on the way to soothe the 2-month-old crying on the bed, still in her footed sleeper with a coffee drip on the front. The dangly earrings didn’t work with my T-shirt anyway, I tell myself. At least my flats are glittery...

I very nearly didn’t come at all. I know it’s the second Sunday in Advent, and I know it would have broken my Sunday-school-loving 5-year-old’s heart, but my heart isn’t in it. It all seems like too much to deal with this morning. I don’t demand perfection from myself, but I expect better than this. Underdressed, frazzled, grumpy, exhausted (because, you know, newborn). This is not my Sunday best. This is my worst.

But then I wonder... Does God really need my Sunday best sitting in the pew this morning? Is that what God is interested in? The clothes I’m wearing?

Why do we come to church anyway? Is it to verify that our fellow congregants are following the unspoken dress code? Even if we don’t truly believe that we must wear dresses and nice clothes to church, we all see the person that looks like me this morning... and we judge (or maybe it’s just me?) Why didn’t they take the time to look even slightly decent, we wonder. Why don’t they care? 

But despite that knowledge, here I sit. Service starts in 20 minutes and I have just decided that God does not demand my best. But he welcomes my worst.

Which is excellent, because on some days, that’s all I have.

Because when I am falling apart, and my kids are screaming monsters, and I just want to crawl into a closet, that’s when I need to hear a good word the most. That’s when I need to sit quietly, ignore the few looks at my attire that are bound to travel my way, and allow myself to be anointed with holy music, ancient liturgy, and a life-affirming, mother-affirming, total-mess-affirming message. 

Broken people are the ones that need fixing, not the whole ones. 

I wonder how many around me on Sunday morning, despite looking their Sunday best, are broken inside, but cannot admit it to themselves. How many cover it up for others’ sake, for God’s sake, (even if they must know, on some level, that it doesn’t work that way) because they don’t want to appear vulnerable? I, for one, hate feeling vulnerable. I don’t mind looking a bit frazzled once in a while, especially since people expect that from a mother of three.

But truly vulnerable? That is something I will rarely sign up for. Because when you are truly vulnerable, others can see down into the depths of wounds that are laid bare and catch a glimpse of the ugly parts of you that you’d rather keep hidden. The parts covered up by your dangly earrings and dressy clothes. You don’t want them to change their opinion of you, even if the opinion they have is not based on the whole truth of you. 

But God. God knows your truths, even if you hate that he does. God knows I need him more than ever today. And as a person that usually thinks I’m doing just fine on my own (even while simultaneously knowing I’m dead wrong), that’s something that even I can see this morning. 

So I’m turning off my ignition, unsnapping a sleeping baby’s car seat, and walking in. I’ll greet my fellow Church members and probably fib a bit when they take in my appearance and ask how I am. Baby steps, right? Say a prayer for me, because God knows I need it today, and for once, I know it, too.