#Realtalk: Last week I had maybe the worst day ever. Well, the worst normal day you could have. I started out with all these great things on my plate for the week, like teaching my new jewelry class, attending Influence that weekend, and my parents visiting. Pair all that with PMS, and you have a happy, yet fairly overwhelming week. I was tired, but having fun and making it through.
Then my hubby drops a mini-bomb on me that he wants me to get my car checked out before my trip to Charlotte. It does what I call “the chunky transmission thing” in which I’m driving along the highway singing Queen to my 15-month-old and it slips out of gear, causing my car to shake violently and my mouth to leak obscenities. (Oops!)
So my dad and I drive to a new auto shop, and my phone with the super old battery dies and I have to rely on my own pristine sense of direction. Of course, I pull off too early and need to make a little U-turn. No problem. As I’m wrenching my wheel as far left as it can go, I hear a metal-crunching SLAM! My front right wheel falls into a drain, and the body of my car crashes onto the pavement.
Thankfully it’s sunny so I don’t look insane as I wear my sunglasses all morning to hide my tears from the auto repair men, the tow truck driver, and my dad. I felt small. I felt stupid (who drives their car into a hole?). I felt like a child. As I watched the tow truck pry my car out, I seriously asked God, “Why?” I could understand real suffering like cancer or death or abuse (which have all touched my world) but for some reason this was too much. Too meaningless. Ridiculous, I know, to get existential about a car accident, but that’s how I felt. Did Jesus care about all this? About me?
When I sat down at the end of the day and told my husband about my no-good, very bad day, I asked him “I seriously want to know: Where was God in this situation? Why would He do this? Or let this happen? If He is good, why was my day so ridiculously awful?!” Mind you, I’m asking this to the man that worked until 10pm that night, left a meeting to take my emergency call, and spent a good 30 minutes arguing with, apologizing to, and forgiving me earlier. So he knows about hard days, too. He took a minute to think and said, very slowly, exactly what I needed to hear:
“I think... anything that shows us that Christ is all we have, is a good thing.”
Yeah.
Drop the mic.
"That answers my question," was all I could say.
He was right. The truth is that most of our lives are spent in the mundane moments of car trouble, crazy children, and communication breakdowns. And Jesus lives there.
Beautiful clay pots by Lukkili on Etsy.
God’s word says that “we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.” {2 Corinthians 4:7} He chose to fill up our weak, fragile bodies with the precious water of His presence. And he did this, not so we could be amazing and successful and have great hair. He did this so that, as we’re poured into and emptied out, as we break under the weight of the world, we see Jesus. His life + love + glory seep out of us like fresh water through cracking dried-up dirt. His beauty is revealed. He is revealed. And so is this truth: That we were weak all along, no matter how we fooled ourselves. But Jesus is good and strong and so, so near.
So what do we do with mundane failure and boring crappy days? We open our eyes. Press into it. We don’t wallow in it, soaking up condemnation and self-loathing. We’re daughters of the King! We see our weakness as it is, our jar of clay breaking so that His beauty can flow out of our brokenness. And if the only fruit of your failure is that you know - just a tiny bit better - that Jesus is all you need, then that’s enough. It’s so much more than enough.
Love in Christ to you, sister.
Megan Craig | Owner + Artist, New Eve Jewelry
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