Dirty Toilets & Community

Lately, I've been reading Brené Brown's work. (If you haven't, check it out. Go for the less self-help Daring Greatly, though.) She researches and writes about shame and vulnerability. I promise, it's way more interesting than I just made it sound. I probably could have saved myself a lot of therapy if I'd found her sooner. Or ended up in a lot more therapy because her work also makes me want to cry. Who knows. The gist of it all is this: we learn shame when we mess up so we refuse to be vulnerable with other people. There's more than that, sure, but that's it in a nutshell.

In some ways, it's a treatise on sin, maybe even original sin. It's weird because it has very little to do with action, but a whole lot to do with why we value ourselves or don't, and how we relate to other  people. She rarely mentions God (she's a practicing Episcopalian), but her work has so much to do with what my tradition claims about God. God knows you, everything about you, and loves you any way. God calls you to live in community and love each other, warts and all. It's terribly, incredibly uncomfortable to be vulnerable before other people, much less a deity, but it's wonderfully, incredibly life-giving to do so. So says Brown and so says God, especially through the words of Paul.

I'm pretty sure, given my vocation and training, I should get the pitfalls of vulnerability and I think, in some ways, I do. I like my privacy for a reason. What did catch me off guard, though, is the cultural perceptions of what I should be and how much that affects me. So yesterday, as I was reading a whole bunch of Brown, I also posted a picture as part of my church's Lent photo a day challenge. Said picture is here. You see, I've come to terms with the fact that I have a messy office; others have not come to terms with that fact. It's still a source of embarrassment to me some days, but mostly, it just doesn't rank high enough on my list of priorities to change it. Lo and behold, this picture revealed my housekeeping shortcomings. In the view on my phone, I was certain I had cut out the black gunk on the back of the toilet bowl. In the view on my laptop, after I'd already posted it to Instagram and Facebook, the black gunk was quite visible. Also, while Instagram filters make selfies look better, they only accentuate the dust around my bathtub and toilet.

I didn't intend to share those things with the world. I have no idea why when I scrub the black gunk off whenever I think about it (which isn't often), it doesn't stay gone. Dust in the desert is always going to win out in my world. Homemaking, though, was important in my family. My mom had a job jar from which my sister and I drew chores each Saturday so that the house was mostly vacuumed, swept, scrubbed, and dusted. Yes, even dusting the stairs was a weekly job in my childhood world. So, like it or not, I learned shame about a messy home and not as clean as it should be. That's present, even as my working and living spaces are most always a wreck.

The people who lived in a dorm with me knew my room would most always be a mess and either didn't care or knew I didn't and chose to leave me alone. There's a vulnerability that comes with living in a dorm, after all. It's a very tight night community that sees every single wart you have, literally and figuratively, at some point during your time there. Most of us in adult world, though, get to choose our vulnerability, especially if we're financially stable.

The little secrets,  the ones only those closest to us know, are often the ones that trip us up. Somehow, Church has easily taught me to celebrate that I can "approach the throne of grace with confidence" and find mercy and help in a time of need. That, though, would certainly be for something big, not something that just niggles at me. The truth is, though, that unless I can trust God and a community of faith to handle little vulnerabilities, I'll never trust them with the large ones. That's the reality of vulnerability and finding belonging in the Christian community.

So here are a few vulnerabilities, related to my housecleaning, or lack thereof:

• I don't have shelf paper or drawer liner in my kitchen or bathroom cabinets. I realize this may not seem like a big deal. This was a skill I learned at a young age and was important for easy cleaning of rough cabinet surfaces. Guess what? I don't dust inside my cabinets either! 
• I gave up folding socks and underwear years ago. Instead, I have lots of drawers. One for dress socks, one for athletic socks, one for underwear, one for sports bras, one for real bras. It works quite well for me. 
• I only occasionally wash sheets. I wash them when I think about it. It's nowhere near as often as it should be. I remember a high school teacher saying bed linens should be washed at least once a week. That makes me laugh. 

So there you go--a few things I'd rather you not know about me. I'm sure you have a few of your own.