“You never care what anyone thinks about you…” I have heard that over and over for as far back as I can remember. It’s not that I don’t care what people think – I very much do, its more that I want to do what I want to do MORE than I care what people think… Sometimes that stick-to-ited-ness has served me well. Other times it has gotten me into a whole lot of trouble.
Like the time I was married to a very nice young man, then met a gorgeous, exotic, soccer player (ok – so he was an undocumented immigrant line cook), and ended up divorced and pregnant with said line cook’s baby… I did what I wanted and didn’t care what anyone thought about it. Yes – there is a whole lot more to the story, but the short end of it is I saw something I had to have and regardless of how uncomfortable I made everyone around me, I was going to have it! I was a misfit…
The definition of a misfit is “a person whose behavior or attitude sets them apart from others in an uncomfortably conspicuous way.” Uncomfortably conspicuous… I assure you when I told my parents that I was getting a divorce and was pregnant by an illegal Mexican named Jose, I was definitely uncomfortably conspicuous!
We all have times in our lives when we have been uncomfortably conspicuous to those around us. Times when hell or high water we are going to do EXACTLY what we want to do. Maybe the thing we want to do is done in secret… Maybe we do it loud and proud, like a giant middle finger to anyone who dares disagree with us! We are all misfits. My question is, why are we more comfortable being a misfit when it comes to doing “bad” things than we are when it comes to doing good things?
When I rededicated my life to Jesus, I looked back over so many of the choices I made and thought to myself, ‘ I can NEVER let anyone know about these things… I will make people so uncomfortable, they won’t want to be around me.’ Yes! God had forgiven me. Yes! There is no condemnation in Christ. But I was a misfit! My plan was to be thankful for the salvation, get my act together, and never ever speak of the mess again! Slowly, as God brought true healing to my heart, I felt Him saying “it’s time to talk about all of the things I delivered you from…” That terrified me because I knew that once again I would be set apart from others in an uncomfortably conspicuous way.
You see, truth is uncomfortable. Me admitting that I am a redeemed adulterer, a forgiven fornicator, a woman that can use her mistakes to help other women know that – regardless of what they have done, they are still worth something and deserve more, makes me uncomfortably conspicuous to the pious, religious people of our day. People are very uncomfortable with a God that forgives and redeems “big” sins, because if He can bring me out of my mess, He may expect them to walk out of theirs…
That is my goal. To show people that if I can turn away from the lifestyle I used to live, and be forgiven, they can too. It may make people uncomfortable but I don’t care what people think. I am still a misfit and I am 100% o.k. with that…
Revelation 12:11 And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony; and they loved not their lives unto the death.
Red Rope Ministries 