when you are a pirate

I had an "eye-opening" experience this week.  I mean this as a pun... I'll tell you why.

These last couple of weeks have been very full and very emotional.  I am in the midst of finishing many things--wrapping up three of my own classes, the group counseling class for which I have been an apprentice-instructor for the past year, and the job that I have had for the past 8 years.  Yikes, so many things that have meant so much to me... they are coming to an end.

How do you end, and end well?  How do you start new things, and start well?  I really don't know.  But I've sure tried to find out.  I sort of fell into an old tendency of mine-- put your nose to the grindstone and try hard.  That's what I've been doing.  Painstakingly leaving detailed notes for the next person in my job.  Trying to process the thousands of wayward emotions that ransack me every day in this transition.  And trying to still be present, and kind, and put together... while the insides of me feel completely not put together.  Transition and change... I guess they don't fall into neat and orderly lines... although I've wished that they would.

So Thursday morning, I was getting ready for a long day of work (at the job I'll soon be leaving) and an evening of celebration (for the class and students that I've been co-instructing this year).  I got up early, ready to take on and embrace the new day and all that it would hold.  As I was doing my eye make-up-- the same way that I do it every morning-- something strange happened.  A piece of my eye pencil fell in to my eye. Long story short, I scratched my cornea, and for the life of me, I could not make my eye stay open.  Instead, my eye fluttered... constantly.  Irritated by the scratch, it constantly fluttered... which gave me a headache.  It was not a good time and I was not in a good mood.

I decided to visit the university nurse, hoping that she would give me some kind of eye drop or salve--something to stop the irritation and constant fluttering.  Nope.  She was very kind but she did not give me a salve.  What she gave me was an eye patch.  Yes, an eye patch that would force my eye to stay shut and stop the irritation and fluttering.  So I emerged from her office with a bulging white cotton patch covering my right eye, held in place by long, stark, obtrusive strips of white tape.  (I do NOT have a picture.)

I looked ridiculous.  And I did not want to run in to anyone.  I literally ran through the halls from her office, back to mine.  And then I closed the door (I never close the door).  What a day.  In all of my attempts to take on the day and handle it well, I found myself sitting in my office with a shut door because I was embarrassed that I looked like a pirate.  And there was nothing I could do about it.  I was in so much pain that I needed that eye patch... I had to look like a pirate.

After a few other sort of similar incidents this weekend, I am facing something very important that I must learn.  I am not perfect.  That is not a surprise to me... I do already know that.  But I'm learning that in the moments when life heats up and my emotions skyrocket, so does the pressure that I put on myself.

So I continue to learn--the hard way at times!--that I must accept my own imperfection.  Jesus' invitation to relationship with Him has nothing to do with performance... it completely has to do with His unconditional acceptance which He already settled long ago at the Cross.  And when I let myself be imperfect, I learn to take the focus off of myself and look to the only One who is completely beautiful and completely perfect.  And He sure is beautiful... and He sure does captivate me.  And somehow in the process of being captivated, I become more like Him.  And life is not about performance or perfection.  It's about knowing and loving the One who has loved me so much.  It's about wanting to be like Him but resting in His grace in the times when I'm not.  It's about standing on the promise that He will pull me through and when I can't, falling on the grace that brought me to Him in the first place (thanks, Rich).

So, from this perspective--eye healed and patch-less--I am grateful for the days when I am humbled into looking like a pirate.  I might still want to hide in my office with the door shut, but I also learn more about what it means to rejoice in my own weaknesses and triumph in the strength that is freely given to me.

Praise Jesus.  May I continue to learn to walk in His ways.