All I Need Is Jesus and a Good Pair of Jeans: The Tired Supergirl's Search for Grace (18 page)

It must have been crowded in Simon the Pharisee’s house. Jesus was swarmed wherever he went. One woman heard he was there and went to look for him. She moved through the crowd in the home, probably followed by a trail of whispers. Because she was that type of woman. The type who did things a godly woman wasn’t supposed to do. When she got to Jesus, she broke down. And as she wept, tears falling on Jesus’s feet, she wiped them away with her hair. She kissed his feet and anointed them with perfume. I’m pretty sure this was scandalous. A bad girl, crying over Jesus, touching him, kissing him. This did not go down well with Simon the Pharisee, who had so graciously invited Jesus into his home. The weeping was bad enough. The fact that a woman of questionable character was in his home rankled him to his very core. The kissing and the foot massage? He was not going to stand for this.

When the Pharisee who was the host saw what was happening and who the woman was, he said to himself, “This proves that Jesus is no prophet. If God had really sent him, he would know what kind of woman is touching him. She’s a sinner!”

Then Jesus spoke up and answered his thoughts. “Simon,” he said to the Pharisee, “I have something to say to you.”

“All right, Teacher,” Simon replied, “go ahead.”

Then Jesus told him this story: “A man loaned money to two people—five hundred pieces of silver to one and fifty pieces to the other. But neither of them could repay him, so he kindly forgave them both, canceling their debts. Who do you suppose loved him more after that?”

Simon answered, “I suppose the one for whom he canceled the larger debt.”

“That’s right,” Jesus said. Then he turned to the woman and said to Simon, “Look at this woman kneeling here. When I entered your home, you didn’t offer me water to wash the dust from my feet, but she has washed them with her tears and wiped them with her hair. You didn’t give me a kiss of greeting, but she has kissed my feet again and again from the time I first came in. You neglected the courtesy of olive oil to anoint my head, but she has anointed my feet with rare perfume. I tell you, her sins—and they are many—have been forgiven, so she has shown me much love. But a person who is forgiven little shows only little love. Then Jesus said to the woman, “Your sins are forgiven.”

Luke 7:39–48

This is a hope-giving moment for tired supergirls everywhere. Because Jesus revealed his heart. Jesus was not impressed by rules or keeping up appearances or perfection. He was moved by this woman’s humility. She knew who she was and what she had done. He knew who she was and what she had done. She was unconcerned with what the other people in that room thought of her. She knew she had found the answer to her love question. Who would love and accept her? Who would forgive her? Who would see beyond who she was and who she could become? Jesus. And this knowledge brought tears. Tears of repentance. Tears of relief. Tears of love. And Jesus didn’t turn her away. He let her minister to him. He let her love him. And then he set her free.

Jesus doesn’t love us tired supergirls because of what we have or have not done. What we look like or what we don’t look like. Jesus doesn’t pick and choose between the holy and the unholy. He loves us simply because we are his. Like a mom loves her newborn baby. She loves that little sweet bit of a thing because that baby is hers. Jesus is the same. Any person who comes, kneels at his feet, and believes in him is his. Plain and simple. Prostitute or Sunday school teacher? His. Thief or banker? His. Liar or history buff? His. We all get to be his. We all get to be loved.

This drives the Un-courager to madness. He does not want us realizing that our worth is based not on ourselves but on Jesus loving us. We may not feel lovable, but the truth is, we are deeply loved. We may have done many things wrong, but when we come to Jesus, he forgives us. The Un-courager wants to keep us in limbo, thinking we have to work for God’s love, wasting our energy trying to earn what is already ours. The love has been given. The forgiveness has been granted. In the light of Jesus’s love, the Un-courager has to go the way of all liars. He is stomped out by the truth.

The best part of the story is that for those of us tired supergirls who have sinned a lot, for those of us who have made mistake after mistake, we just get a chance to love him more. We don’t have to feel condemned by our lack. We get to marvel at Jesus’s great forgiveness. Simon the Pharisee didn’t get it. He lived his whole life following the rules so he didn’t realize the freedom that Jesus offered. He didn’t feel like he needed to do anything special to honor Jesus. He didn’t even offer him the common courtesy of washing his feet or putting oil on his head. Simon should have been freaked out when Jesus read his thoughts and told him the story of the two debtors. He wasn’t bowled over by Jesus, because he thought he had achieved holiness and goodness on his own merits.

This woman saw Jesus for who he was. She might have sinned a lot. Jesus read her mail too. He knew what she had done. But she got what he was about. She got that he was holy while she wasn’t. She got that he was perfect while she struggled. She got that he was the only one who could give her what she had been searching for. She knew he was her savior. She was blown away by his love and forgiveness, and she did what Simon should have done. She worshiped him. The Son of the Most High God. She wept before him. She thanked him. She took what he was offering. Love.

So it is with us tired supergirls. Like Simon we can pretend there is some way to achieve lovableness on our own merits. We can invite Jesus into our lives but refuse to recognize him for who he is—the savior of our souls. Or we can get real like the woman with the bad reputation. We can recognize that our worth comes from the fact that we belong to Jesus and that he loves us. And we can follow her example. We can love him back.

23

I HAVE
A LONG WAY TO GO

I
have spent my whole life waiting for
that moment
to arrive. You know what I am talking about.
That moment
is that precise second when everything we have hoped and dreamed of, all that our lives were meant to be and everything we have longed to be comes to pass. And hopefully, it will come to pass on a Friday so that we have an entire weekend to celebrate the arrival of
that moment
and the amazing person we now are. We tired supergirls have been yearning for this moment for years and hankering after that feeling of coming into our own ever since we can remember.

I have talked to other supergirls about this very thing. And they feel the same.
That moment
is just around the corner. We have almost achieved it, and yet
that moment
never seems to come. We catch glimpses of it. We get small tastes of it here and there. But somehow
that moment
eludes us. Somehow we are still the same person we were last Tuesday. How can it be that we tired supergirls feel that at some particular time we will face the masses and crow, “Aha! This is it! Everything has fallen into place. Life is all that it is meant to be and I have become all I was ever meant to be!”

I know it sounds silly. But ever since I was a little girl, I have said to myself,
Okay, when __________ happens,
then my life will really begin
. My cousin Beth and I would talk about all the amazing things that would happen to us when
that moment
arrived. These chats began when we were around twelve years of age, and lo and behold, they are still happening. At first the blank was filled with “when I get my ears pierced” trailed by “when I turn sixteen” which segued into “when I go to college” then onto “when I graduate from college” followed by “when I get married” joined by “when I find my life’s passion” rounded out by “when I have a baby” and on the heels of “when I get published” which is rapidly becoming “when I hold my book in my hands” not to be trumped by “when I get all my children in school” and “when I perfect my marriage” and “when I love Jesus like I should.” The blank is forever changing. Maybe it is because I am forever changing. Or maybe it is because when I round the corner on these events, I still find myself the same.

Several of these milestones have come to pass in my life. Even now, I have large hoop earrings dangling from my ears, and
that moment
has not yet arrived. I am way past sixteen. I have graduated from college, married, and bore three extremely large children, and I am still searching for
that moment
. Each of these moments were moments of great joy and wonderment in my life. I think I have never felt so filled with life as I did on my wedding day. Holding my newborn sons for the first time, staring into their perfectly new wide eyes, and kissing their sweet little necks for the first time go down in my personal history as the highest, headiest moments of my life. These are moments I dreamed of. I even felt fairly happy with myself and who I was when they happened.

But, truth be told, those highs moments are few and far between. A whole lot of regular living goes on in between. Each time I think I have reached the pinnacle, I realize, nope, I’m not quite there. I’m missing something. I am not the person I need to be. I still have so much to learn. This amazing event has happened and yet I am still far from yelling out to the universe, “Take note, people! I have arrived!”

And let’s not forget the fact that I struggle. On a fairly regular basis. Those three sweet boys can drive me to anger and madness. They really can. My husband and I discuss things. (We don’t argue, we discuss.) I have yet to get a handle on the whole “Christian walk” thing. I get frustrated with the fact that I haven’t conquered all my fears and overcome all of my weaknesses. I have lots of issues. (As if you didn’t know that.) And just when I think
that moment
is around the corner, it’s not. There is yet another hurdle to overcome. Another way in which I need to grow. There is that word. Grow. Growth. Growing. Let’s just lay it out, supergirls. “You need to grow” is just another way of saying you are simply not where you need to be in a certain area of your life. You are lacking in maturity. You are little when you really need to be big. You need to be way up there, but no, you are way down here somewhere and if you want to get way up there, you must grow. Change. Reshape yourself. Thrust yourself upward. And I must admit that most days I think I will never get to
that moment
.

You’ll-Never-Get-There-in-a-Million-Years Guy loves it when I feel this way. He cheers. He rails. He shakes his finger at me.

“You are so right! You are never going to get there. Wherever there is. You really gave it the old college try. But you just really stink when it comes to changing.”

Or, “Wow! I know you thought you were different than last week. But you’re not. You have always had a hard time when it comes to forgiving people. You are lousy at it. Just give up.”

Or, “You will always be who you are. Don’t fight it. It’s really too hard to change your nature. You can keep trying, of course. I mean, really, you can if you want to. But honestly [in a low hissing whisper], you will never make it in a million years.”

Evil laugh and all, he really is the devil. He is the hope killer. The destroyer of dreams and basher of faith. He is in this thing until the end because he really, really wants to make sure that we tired supergirls give up. That is his goal. To see that we give up. You’ll-Never-Get-There-in-a-Million-Years Guy wants to make sure that we supergirls think it is impossible to change, even though we’ve loved Jesus for all these years and listened for his voice and longed to be the person he wants us to be. He wants us to see all that we will never be. And the thing is, if we are trying to hitch ourselves up by our bootstraps, put our best selves into making our own dreams come true, and pouring ourselves into self-betterment, Million Years Guy is right. Even with all that discipline and self-love and positive talk, it will take more than good thoughts and righteous intentions to grow us up into the supergirls we were meant to be. We need something more.

Jesus was always giving his disciples great word pictures about who he was: the Way, the Truth, and the Life; the Bread of Life; the Son of Man; the Light of the World; the Bright and Morning Star; the Vine, the True Vine. He used examples of everyday things to make people see him in a new, relevant way. I’m sure they had passed by hundreds of vineyards when they traveled with him. Grapes were a part of everyday vernacular. The disciples knew about vines.

I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch that doesn’t produce fruit, and he prunes the branches that do bear fruit so they will produce even more. You have already been pruned for greater fruitfulness by the message I have given you. Remain in me, and I will remain in you. For a branch cannot produce fruit if it is severed from the vine, and you cannot be fruitful apart from me.

Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing. Anyone who parts from me is thrown away like a useless branch and withers. Such branches are gathered into a pile to be burned. But if you stay joined to me and my words remain in you, you may ask any request you like, and it will be granted! My true disciples produce much fruit. This brings great glory to my Father.