Practice what you preach.
January 5th, 2009I know this post is long, but I can’t find one word that I can leave out. Humor me?
It was 8:59 a.m. two years ago when I darted into the classroom, hurrying to find a spot on the back row while the prof began talking. I had only been in grad school one semester, but it was long enough to realize one very important thing: I was the youngest student in the program by far, not to mention one of only a few girls in this particular class. As Professor Harper began going over the schedule for the day, I realized that I had forgotten something, too: the assignment due that day.
The class was Creative Teaching & Preaching, a title that still makes me laugh as I’ve never had any intention to “preach.” Our assignment for that day was to present a short “creative sermon” of our choosing, though the material had to be original and aimed at people who worked in ministry. It was easy to understand how I could have forgotten — on top of being a full time grad student, I was working two part-time jobs and trying to run Starlite at the same time (I hadn’t gone on salary for Starlite at this point yet). I had simply let the ball slip — and I was scheduled to present right after lunch.
As soon as we were released for our hour lunch break, I hurried over to the Starlite office to come up with a plan. This, of course, didn’t work as I had barely made it through the door before the girl answering the phones handed me a message that just couldn’t wait. Nearly 50 minutes later, I hung up the phone and realized that not only did I not have a sermon, but I also didn’t have any lunch.
I ran into our kitchen and, with a silent prayer, threw open the fridge to grab something to eat in the car on my way back to the university. That’s when I discovered that, sometime in the very recent past, our fridge had become unplugged from the wall and everything inside had spoiled. I stood there just staring in unbelief when it suddenly hit me.
Into my oversized purse went the molded cheese, old eggs and soured milk. I found some mayonnaise that was now unusable and some leftover soup, too. On my way out the door, I grabbed two empty bowls and rushed out to my car with a reminder to the office volunteers to text me if they needed me yelled over my shoulder.
My classmates had just settled in when Professor Harper called me to the front of the room. Up I went, lugging my whale of a purse in one hand and the bowls in the other. Then, without saying anything, I sat the two bowls in front of me and poured a bottle of clear water into the first bowl.
“This,” I said, as I carefully placed both hands in the bowl filled with clear water, “represents what I thought ministering would be like before I began actually doing it. Sure, you have to get your hands wet, but it’s almost refreshing and certainly transparent — nothing to scare you away.”
Sure that I was making an absolute fool of myself, I pulled my hands out and slowly dried them on the side of my jeans before holding up the other bowl before the class to show it was empty. With a nervous glance towards the professor, I placed the bowl before me and pulled the first surprise from my purse — the leftover soup.
“What I’ve found instead,” I began, as I poured the soup into the bowl, “is that ministry is actually quite messy, especially when you’re working with girls like the ones I’ve been privileged to serve. You see, there’s a lot that goes into it that I just didn’t expect.”
With every set of eyes in the room on me, I pulled the mayonnaise from my purse. “Take verbal abuse for example,” I said as I unceremoniously dumped it into the bowl. “I know a few girls who can still tell you where they were standing when their mother first told them how fat they had become.”
The cheese came out of my purse next and easily crumpled into the bowl. “Or emotional abuse like the girl who once told me about the kids on the school bus who had played a daily game of musical seats always leaving her left sitting alone.”
I reached for a couple of eggs next, taking a deep breath before I began. “You can’t forget physical abuse, of course. I wish you could meet the girl who told me how her brother used to tie her to a chair and throw paper airplanes at her.” I took the eggs and simultaneously cracked them before dropping their contents into the bowl. “It doesn’t really sound like physical abuse until you hear that he put needles from his diabetic mother’s supply in them before sending them flying into her skin.”
The class was silent as I pulled the last thing from my bag, the half empty container of soured milk.
“And then there’s this,” I said as I unscrewed the lid and placed it aside. “Possibly the worst kind of abuse, the one we talk about the least but should be screaming about from the rooftops: sexual abuse.”
I poured the milk into the bowl slowly, watching my classmates’ faces as the smell of the bowl hit them, so overpowering that the boy sitting to my left actually gagged. “Perhaps it’s the one we hear least about since we were never actually in that bed with her, Barbie themed sheets pulled over our head in a desperate attempt to block his hands.”
I could hear them crying, especially the girls who knew all too well what that bed felt like.
“People tell me all the time that they wish they could do what I do, start a ministry for girls. I wonder if they would still feel that way if they saw what it’s really been like for me. It’s been about putting my hands into lives where some of the messes left behind don’t feel very nice or smell very good. It’s been about blood and sweat and tears and an awful lot of other things that sometimes leave me standing in a hot shower at night, crying for the girl I met earlier that day before turning the water a bit hotter when I think of the girls yet to have been met crying in their own showers that night as they try to wash it all away. And when I finally step out of the shower and crawl into bed, I do so knowing that I’ll wake up the next day with an opportunity to once again get my hands dirty.”
With tears rolling down my face, I placed my hands in the bowl, cupping the mess in my hands.
“This… this is what being in ministry has been like for me.”
Today, on my very first real day back at work this year, I had the opportunity to put my hands in the bowl once again. I’ve seen a lot of ugly things over the last six years of Starlite, but none of it could come close to what waited for me when I ran up to the back door of that house today, mere minutes after I got the call. Before I could even grab the doorknob, I saw what had happened through the small glass window and thought I might pass out.
Instead I went inside, fell to my knees in front of her and started getting my hands dirty — literally, not just figuratively. It would be several long hours before I’d get into my own car and head towards home, absolutely exhausted as walked into my living room and collapsed on the couch. And that’s where I was laying tonight when it suddenly hit me.
I’m getting the chance to once again practice what I preach.
