U is for Under the Covers

I love my blankets.  I love crawling into bed at night with three or four heavy wool blankets and my comforter surrounding me.  I like the feel of their weight.  They make me feel warm, relaxed, and ready to surrender to the night.  I like to snuggle and burrow myself deep down into the bed so I am practically invisible.  If I am cold at all during the night – I cannot sleep.  I will toss and turn but I will not sleep if there is the slightest hint of cold touching my body.  My husband – who will generally kick off even a sheet, does not share my passion for being covered in layers and layers of blankets.  He finds them constricting and he can’t move.  They tangle his feet and he wakes up unable to sleep under their suffocating weight.

That is the problem with blankets.  They can suffocate, and when we live our lives buried underneath them, covering up who we really are, we become entangled in a mess.  If you have read any of my earlier blog posts, you know that through college I did not always live up to the expectations of one who claims to be following Christ.  And while I was learning, there were lots of steps forward, but there were some huge steps backwards as well.  I remember one occasion sharing with a Christian woman some of my struggles – even naming some of the sins I had committed, and while she herself was very kind, she warned me that I should never talk about these things because people would judge me and gossip about me.  I respected this woman a great deal, so I took her words to heart.

Unfortunately, trying to live your life with a big chunk of it covered up, is not easy to do.  I wasn’t sure how to deal with the dirty laundry that I had accumulated – and, was continuing to accumulate.  And since I wasn’t supposed to share with anyone, I covered it up. I hid it under a blanket where no one could see.  I continued to live my life, attempting as best I could to live like Christ wanted me to, but on those occasions when I didn’t, I just shoved those things to the pile under the cover of my blanket.

On the outside, I looked good.  I looked righteous, I looked like the pristine example of a Christian, but on the inside, where I kept my dirty laundry hidden under layers of blankets – it was beginning to stink.  And the pile seemed to keep growing.  So, unable to take the suffocating weight of it all, I did what I had been advised not to do, I began to let people see the dirty laundry that I was hiding under the blankets.

And, in doing so, I was able to get the laundry clean.  Each person that I shared with helped me carry some of the dirty clothes to the foot of the cross where Christ cleaned them – and made me clean.  The confessions would cause me to feel better, stronger, and then, I would take my laundry, clean now, fold it all up in nice neat piles and put them right back under the blanket where they stayed hidden.  Never realizing that even though my laundry was now clean, and it was no longer a burden in my life, I was still covering up, still sharing only a slice of who I am – and in doing so, I was concealing the healing power of Christ in my life.  It is one thing to say, “I am a sinner, healed by Christ” and quite another to say, “Here is my journey, here is where Christ has cleansed me and this is how He continues to bring healing in my life.”

I am not there yet.  I have kicked off some of the covers and let a selected, hand-picked few in – but it’s scary.  “What if people gossip about me?  What if people say terrible things about me? What if I lose their respect?  What if they hate me and no longer want to associate with me?”  However, slowly, with the help of good friends and God’s prompting, I am learning to live without the blankets that cover up Christ’s amazing redemptive work in my life.  I am learning to walk in obedience and share what He has done.  I am learning to live without the blankets in my life – but not at night, I’m not giving up the blankets on my bed anytime soon!