We Are Bookmarks

We are Bookmarks

I have a peculiar way of cleaning out rooms. When I really want something cleaned like it's springtime, I take everything out of each nook and cranny, pile it up and organize it first, THEN I decide where each set of items should go to utilize my space most efficiently, and I carefully put it away. Recently, I've learned that a woman named Marie Kondo has made a good living teaching people how to clean in a similar way-- if I had only known it was marketable.

Kondo has a lot of fans, but it seems that whenever I'm working on a cleaning project, the following happens: I am in the midst of my piles, gazing around the room, developing a plan. Envisioning where everything should be stored and how, and imagining anything that could go wrong with each scenario. Some objects have fallen on the floor, some piles are in the middle of the floor, but I don't care, and I don't rush to pick them up. I can see everything. I know where everything is, and I am about to work some magic. 

It is at that moment that someone walks in. It could be an extended family member, a coworker (Yes, I did this in my classroom at the end of summer, every year), a friend, or a complete stranger. And they all have the same reaction. They make this little scoffing sound as they weigh the mess filling the room. Sometimes there will be a snide comment or a sarcastic offer to help, and some people do the worst thing they could possibly do-- they start picking things up and throwing them in shoeboxes and dresser drawers and taking piles into other rooms, trying to offer services to the helpless person standing in the middle of the room. I can't think of much that causes more anxiety than that, friends. Because I'm not helpless. I'm not lost, and I'm not incapable. 

 I'm just not finished yet.

Then, whenever that happens, I've seen it time and time again. That same person, the one who scoffed and visibly wrote me off enters the same room after I am finished. When the project is complete and ready for reveal. When everything is in its place and perfectly ordered with great care and thought and intention. And every time, they say, "Oh," with the same sort of rising pitch, such surprise in their voices. I just slap my forehead, judge their lack of intelligence and underestimation of me, and move on. 

But then something happened. It was just the other day. I picked up my middle school daughter and two of her friends from their after-school history club. They all piled in the back of my car, and my daughter handed me a large, rectangular piece of cardboard with strings wrapped around it. She said, "Look Mom, I made a bookmark. It's Christmas themed." I took it from her and glanced at it sideways. There was yarn stuck in the strings, but I didn't pay attention to that. All I saw was the cardboard. Ugly and creased in several places. Did I mention I was driving out of the school parking lot at the time? I mean, what kind of driver would I be if I didn't take this new "hands free" policy seriously? So, I handed it back to her, slightly confused by it, and asked, "Why is it so big? Is it for a textbook or something?"

She and her friends were suddenly quiet. All she said was no. Yikes, did it sound like I was criticizing her? I wasn't trying to. Then I agonized that I had made the car ride awkward altogether. I was only asking a question! Bless my baby's heart, I embarrassed her in front of her friends. I felt terrible. I wanted another chance to make her feel good about her bookmark, but it was going to take some true acting skills to say that it was attractive in any way.

They perked up in the back after a minute and changed the subject. After I had dropped the other girls off, my daughter was again quiet. I noticed in the rear view mirror that her head was down and her hands were busy. When I pulled into our garage, her bright voice broke the silence. "Look, I finished." She reached up to the front seat, not with a huge brown rectangle, but a tiny, woven, sparkly, perfectly bookmark-sized creation.

It was lovely. So lovely. Broad red-and-white stripes with fringed ends. I was astonished. And then I did it. "Oh," I exclaimed, with the same rising pitch and the same dumbfounded expression as all the people who who had seen my unfinished projects and were surprised at the results.

My stomach dropped. "That was a loom," I tried to process what had happened. "It was a loom, wasn't it?" She laughed. "Of course it was. Oh! That's why you asked why it was big. I was so confused by that." She laughed again and immediately forgave me and trotted off with her beautiful creation to find a book to mark with it.

I did the same thing others have done to me that compelled me to judge and condescend. The same dang thing.

I apologized to my daughter the next morning, and she was fine, not hurt at all, but I couldn't stop thinking about the bookmark.

What else have I seen in an unfinished state, assuming it was the best it could be and dubbing it ugly? Unworthy? Disposable? What else indeed.. and who? Who else?

I mean, aren't we all bookmarks hanging off of looms? Aren't we all doing the best we can with what we have right now? And what we have is pain, and baggage, and heartache, and fears, and disease, and overwhelming responsibilities, and insecurities, and unaccomplished goals. For the time being, aren't we all unfinished?

Perhaps I shouldn't speak for you, but I know that I am a bookmark, hanging by threads off of a bulky piece of bent up cardboard. Unfinished, tacky, confusing. And that's all people see sometimes.

It won't be until after the judgment, when we get our new bodies, that God will take us off of the loom and we will be complete. Perfect. Not what we are here-- Not even close.

In your life you will be misunderstood. You will be judged. You will seen by some as something that should be faultless and just isn't. It probably has already happened, hasn't it? And you can't control what others think. How they judge. The standards they set. There are a couple of things you can control, though. 

Number one. You can control how you see them. 

You can extend grace, you can offer mercy. You can give the benefit of the doubt whenever it's possible to give it. You can know and rest assured that that person, that foible-filled, mistake-making person is an unfinished bookmark, marking a page in your story and maybe helping you to learn something, grow in some way. You could even appreciate it.

Number two. You can be the bookmark. It's unfinished, sure. But it doesn't have to be so ugly it's devastating. It doesn't have to be demonic. It doesn't have to have ulterior motives and selfishness and jealousy.

You can leave something beautiful that they will always remember. Show them what an unfinished bookmark looks like, when Christ is in control. So when they do remember, and they open their memories to the page where they encountered you, all they see is Jesus in their story.