The Day my Daughter Dropped the F-Bomb
Last month, I visited a sweet friend. She’s a pastor’s wife. She’s everything I want to be as a Christian woman. Not because she’s righteous but because she’s not. She stands secure in Christ. While she strives to be like Him, she strives harder to love others like Him. Her aim isn’t toward being more perfect but toward loving more perfectly. When we are together we are constantly celebrating the face of Jesus in one another. We are players on a football field doing funky dances of celebration when we share stories of Christ’s beauty in one another’s lives. Except instead of dances and chest bumps, we exchange tears. I think more tears slowly streamed down my cheeks in celebration of God’s glory in our lives in that weekend than I have shed in the past year for the same reason. I adore this woman; she is lovely in every way.
Toward the end of our visit she shared something that completely shocked me. At the last church her husband pastored, she confessed to her closest friends that she swears like a sailor and, in a desire to be changed, asked for their prayers.
“A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.” Luke 6:45
There’s no getting around it. Foul language reveals a foul heart. Impatience and raging words, reveal an impatient and raging heart. No one wants that. Anyone who is honest with themselves about the condition of their heart wants to be changed. But there’s no earthly doctor for spiritual heart surgery. There’s only one place this can happen and sometimes we need our friends to carry our helpless, hopeless souls to the only One who can heal this kind of brokenness. My friend was defeated and asking for this kind of help.
Rather than receiving my friend’s heart with grace and acceptance, this news sparked condemnation from within her inner circle. Oddly enough, I don’t think I cried in this moment but I remember my stomach sinking and the pit within it felt enormous. Please understand, I said I was shocked, but it wasn’t because she swears like a sailor; I was shocked that this incredible woman who so clearly exhibits the love of God would be condemned for her sin in the midst of people who have experienced the kind of extravagant, gracious and Christ-like love she models to others.
In contrast, the other day I was with my co-op friends after a morning of Christ-centered teaching. We were standing outside watching the kids play football when one of the boys who is involved in a football league lost his temper and used his own “F-bomb.” His mom was mortified.
Her son’s heart had just been revealed to all of us “righteous and God-fearing women.” I watched her face transition from already feeling defeated in parenthood to downright ashamed.
Two things can happen in this moment. My friend, the pastor’s wife, experienced one: shock and condemnation. Or…..
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Night had fallen, dinner was over. Coloring had commenced in anticipation of our evening reading. They were sitting at the dining room table. I was lounging on the couch less than 10 feet away when I hear,
Hannah: “Don’t put that finger up!!”
Ben: “Why??”
Hannah: “You’re just not supposed to.”
Ben: “Why”
Hannah: ”Because it means something bad or something…
…Mom, what does it mean when you put your middle finger up again?”
Me: “I never told you what it meant. It means something really vulgar.”
Hannah: “What does vulgar mean?”
Me: “It means something that is really, really mean and upsetting. It’s a word we just don’t use.”
I did eventually tell them the precise words that the middle finger means, but when they continued to press even for the meaning of that, I drew the line there. I was not going any further.
Me: “Just don’t say it….Or put your middle finger up. Ever. Under any circumstances.”
I learned a week or three later that apparently Jeff was not within earshot of this precious little homeschool lesson as my family was traveling on a VERY cold evening through rural Pennsylvania. My youngest child, who had GI related issues, declared she needed a bathroom immediately. We knew that once she articulates the need for a bathroom, there is little time to waste. So we shot off the highway at the very next exit. There were no signs indicating nearby facilities of any sort. Relieved to find a convenience store (the only one for miles) I whisked little Abby out of her car seat and ran inside what turned out to be a place too small to be a grocery store but sold great big packages of beef and chicken in a refrigerated section, yet it had all of the single dose pain relievers and travel hygiene packages of a small convenience store. Come to think of it, it was really quite an odd place. The kind of place you’d only expect to find off of a highway in the middle of nowhere.
Looking desperately in every corner I found no bathroom but way in the back of the store, a sign on a doorway read, “no public restrooms.” It clearly led to a restroom–apparently a very private one. The store manager stood nearby and was already looking at me when I made desperate eye contact, “Is there any chance we can use your restroom, you’re the only place around and my little girl has to go very badly,” I pleaded. She heartlessly shook her head. Nope. Not a chance. I might have considered going through those precious private doors except this lady was toothless and there was a good chance she’d lost those teeth in some awesome brawls. She directed me to an outhouse 100 yards away in the middle of the yard out back.
It was about 36 degrees outside and misting.
I was pissed.
I walked out of the convenience store and upon meeting my husband’s eyes, I gave him (what I thought to be) a subtle middle finger gesture in the general direction of the inconvenience store. I have ZERO idea what came over me. None. Well… perhaps the leftover endorphins from when I DIDN’T throat punch the store manager? No excuse, I suppose. That said, after taking my 4-year-old into an unmaintained (<—that description right there will have to suffice) outhouse with exactly zero sanitizer to spare us, I climbed back into the 4Runner raging mad but speechless and this is the discussion that followed:
Jeff: I guess you didn’t think your daughter who is sitting in the back seat would comprehend the gesture you made at me, but you should know that as you walked away toward the outhouse, she quite plainly asked, “Daddy, why did Mommy just say fuck you?” Sooo…just so you know she’s learning some interesting things in public school.”
Me: Um…………..
Jeff: Yeah, you can’t even imagine the bleeding that occurs in your ears when you hear your beautiful 9-year-old daughter utter those words.
Me: <squinty guilty face> Well…actually…yeeeaah….that was homeschool.
And then I proceeded to tell him all about our educational moment and how I completely just undid any positive thing that should have come from that lesson.
And we laughed.
And laughed.
And laughed.
And tears streamed down our faces as Jeff reenacted the enormous and frantic arm flailing gestures he had been making whilst loudly and emphatically insisting Hannah never, ever utter those words again.
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So when my friend’s son shouted “fuck you!” on a playground full of sweet, perfect, little Christian children, and the awkward silence fell over this group of mom’s unsure of what to say. I confessed my heart. I jumped down in that hole with her and we joined hands in our humanity. I told our recent story. I also shared a few other ugly moments that happen in the privacy of my home which don’t end in laughter—moments in which I struggle with shame. I revealed lots of ugly with these supposedly “righteous” women. And they could have responded in shock and horror, in a similar fashion to my friend (the pastor’s wife) sharing her own sin, and I, in my own heart, would have had to cling to the reality of Jesus’ redeeming grace and infinite love for my broken self. Or they could have responded just as they did, by joining my friend and I in our hole of ugliness.
The very first words uttered in response were, “It’s so true, we really are all just the same–not one better than another.” They all jumped in, and there in that black hole of evil hearts revealed, we all stood, holding hands, united in our ragged jagged mess. But more importantly united in the hope of the redeeming work of Jesus Christ.
I have always experienced such profound grace in this group, but still, sharing this story was risky and I’m so grateful for the blessing of being surrounded by people who do not take themselves too seriously, who recognize it is not about them, but all about Christ. Friends who “do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit but in humility consider others better than themselves…” who are not eager to outdo one another in their own righteousness but eager to remind one another of His. These are the broken people I want my children to watch, to be more like—broken and redeemed, gracious and loving because I think that’s the good news for which everyone is hungry.
Walking through the world, encountering broken people and their crazy embarrassing, or ignorant moments, grace wins when we reflect on our own humanity and offer Christ’s redeeming and unconditional love, and hope for healing in response. I think this is how we exhibit our priesthood and usher people into the Holy of Holies: the place where Christ dwells:
“….Yeah, I’m totally an unrefined and unfinished work, too. Come and see my Jesus. He totally get’s it, He doesn’t leave us here, and oh how he loves us so!”