Bleach

Remember how two weeks ago I shared that my entire house smells like pee? Well. Celebrate with me, my friends. I have wrought a long, sweaty battle and emerged victorious.

Tonight, after dinner, my husband took one look at me (my hair is my tell, apparently) and herded all of our feral children upstairs to give me a quiet moment. I considered lying on the floor and reconsidering all my life choices, but I was afraid I wouldn’t get back up again. So, instead, I took a gallon of hot water, 1/2 cup of bleach and two tablespoons of powdered tide* in an old plastic pitcher and went to work.

I washed the walls, the toilet, the floor, ceiling, baseboards… all of it. I may need a mental health day and a little white pill after seeing what came off- BUT- my house no longer smells like pee!

Apparently, it now smells like a water park. Thanks, Sophia.

(I did get a giggle, however, when Chris informed her that the reason water parks smell the same is because they, too, are covered in pee… her face. I might just get out of Great Wolf Lodge vacations for a while. Double victory 👊)

There’s something so satisfying about bleach though, isn’t there? Watching as something you know is disgusting and germ-infested becomes sparkling white before your eyes. And it’s not just a color change- you know that it’s actually clean now, that it’s sanitized and safe. I felt physically better about being in my bathroom after cleaning with my concoction- much more so than after a quick spray of all-purpose cleaner or lighting a candle.

On to the point of this blog:

I was hanging out with someone recently who believes in God- a benevolent God, maybe even a Creator God. But Jesus Christ AS God? It feels like the impossible leap. And I must admit, in my own life, if my faith feels like wavering on a point, it is almost always this one. I acknowledge my Creator, I can only believe Him to be all-powerful and kind. These truths to me are self-evident and don’t require any real faith in my heart. But Jesus? I find myself often praying- “Lord, I believe – help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24)

I think this is because to acknowledge Jesus, is to acknowledge my sin- both its existence and its gravity. We can believe in a gentle and smiling Creator Who loves us, but as long as it ends there? We just keep living our life with this panacea of faith that adds a rosy glow to our songs and goosebumps to our liturgies. Then we hum a little tune as we go on about our lives as we see fit, living to bring ourselves greatest satisfaction, with maybe some altruistic side-quests to satisfy our sense of selfworth as needed. But Jesus… if He was God, and He died, that means He died for a reason. And it must have been a pretty significant one, for the Creator to offer up His own life in our place.

Well.. what could be more significant than the total corruption of one’s creation? Not much that I could imagine. Really, not anything at all.

So then, to acknowledge Jesus, is to acknowledge that I am, in fact, corrupt…and lost…and very much in need of redemption. I don’t like that. I think I’m a pretty neat person. Sure, I screw up, but… doesn’t everybody? Is it really *my fault*? I’ve never murdered anybody, or stolen anything valuable… surely I haven’t done anything deserving my own death… nothing certainly that would require the death of a Deity Himself to atone for… right?

So… we light candles. We cover up the smell of our selfishness, our arrogance, our disregard for those we don’t deem worthy of our time. We swipe a quick paper towel over the occasional gossip and lie, and spritz our hateful hearts and covetous minds with some lemon & sage-y scented sanitizer and call it a day.

But it doesn’t last. The stink creeps back up. We think it’s depression, “maybe I’m just not fulfilled in my career or my marriage”, “Maybe it’s the broken, evil people all around me”, “Life’s just so hard these days, that’s why I feel sad and rotten when I see the news or sit in the quiet”….

But what we cannot stand to admit is the intolerable truth: The stink? It’s inside of us.

Romans says that we are all born with an intricate understanding of ourselves and our Creator. That all of creation groans, because we know, deep down, that we’re dirty. In fact, we’re downright gross.

We need bleach.

We need the caustic, costly “bleach” of the blood of Christ. That doesn’t just cover up the smell of my sin, doesn’t just make me appear a bit whiter to the world around me. No, it enters in and literally burns the sin out of my heart. It makes me new, clean, whole. No more smell.

Well, let’s be honest, there will be a smell. Because bleach has a smell of its own. When my daughter walked in the bathroom, she knew it was different. And she knew it was clean. And that’s what real regeneration does, right? When we finally admit that we’re broken, when we finally ask Christ to make us clean, we don’t leave and just go back to living the same way anymore. We look different, we “smell” different. We live different.

That’s the difference of Jesus.

This analogy will completely break down tomorrow morning when my twins wake up and resume their warfare on the sanity and sanitation of my home. But in the meantime, I hope the next time you smell bleach, you remember to pray for your friends. The ones who are still lighting candles and wondering why they’re so dang unhappy. And also send up a prayer of Thanksgiving to a Creator who cared enough to save us from ourselves, at the cost of his own precious blood.

I know I will.

With love,

Kelsey

*Thank you to The Cleaning Lady for this magical concoction. I found her on Instagram ages ago. But really do have a therapist on speed-dial if you try it, it’s traumatizing.