lessons learned from a pimple

Pimples are just obnoxious things. Nasty little impurities rise up to the surace of the skin, and then just kind of linger there and scream, "Look at me!" To the zit-bearer, it seems like everyone is answering the call, looking long and hard at that embarrassing blemish that's reminiscent of Rudolph. Most of us don't have the patience or humility to endure waiting for the little fellow to go away on its own, so we pick and pinch and pop. Unfortunately, we often turn a little red pimple into a bleeding mess and then a permanent scar.

Ugh. It's just gross. But I've discovered I have a lot to learn from zits.

See, if we are letting God do his thing in our lives, he is going to be faithful to bring impurities up to the surface. He's going to be faithfully getting out the junk. Downside? Sometimes the nastiness just sits there on the surface for a while. I walk around with some weakness or sin hanging out like an embarrassing blemish screaming, "Hey! Look at me!" I want a bag over my head.

My most common zit is insecurity. It's always a battle, but most of the time it's manageable. Every once in a while, however, it all comes to the surface, and I turn into a jumbled mess of needless disclaimers, nervous comments, and generally annoying, overtalkative weirdness. And it's irritating--I mean really, I know it is. So I scratch at it...disclaim the disclaimers, make up for nervous comments with silly apologies. Oh, what a mess--an embarrassing blemish, most visible to those closest to me. But really, insecurity is just a special cocktail of lies, an bunch of junk that needs to get out of my system for me to live more and more like Jesus wants me to. It's got to go, and it's just going to have to show up in all its awkward glory sometimes during the process.

I don't know what it looks like to just let it hang out on the surface until it mends on its own, but I know that's what I need to learn to do. I need to let it get out and heal , no matter how much I feel like everyone around me is looking on in disgust. I have a feeling what I need is a dose of humility. And let's be honest; if our faults really are anything like zits, then they are probably much bigger and redder in our eyes than in anyone else's.

God doesn't want to scar us, he wants to heal us. He wants to give us lives with constantly improving complexions, lives that are more and more like his own. We just need to learn to avoid the bloody, panicked mess so we can humbly let him get the junk out.