God and Bad Breath

Like most people I don’t wake up with the freshest mouth. I move to brush my teeth as soon as I can in the morning. I am self conscience about letting anyone get near me. I keep my face under the covers until Josh gets up, I don’t get too close to the kids—keeping my face turned away if they insist on a hug before I can get to the sink. I don’t even like being close to myself…it’s one of my least favorite things about me.

This week, I got to bring Gareth and Audrey to the beach with my parents. Josh and Cecilia had to stay home for school and work. I try to get up before the sun on the first morning when I’m at the beach and go out and spend time with God as the sun comes up. Mark 1 is my motivation. “Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where He prayed.” Jesus knew that rest didn’t come princilby from sleep but from time with His Dad. So even after a VERY BUSY day and LATE night, He still gets up early and prays, connects, abides with His Father. I try to follow His example on vacations. Spending the first morning up before the sun, letting my Father know that He is my true vacation, time with Him is TRUE and powerful Rest.

The problem is that I’m the only one waking early in a house full of people. My kids are light sleepers…one sound and they wake up. So when I get up I have to tip, tip, tip toe out the door just to make it down to the beach. That means no time for the cleaning of the mouth. This morning while I was watching the sun rise with my heavenly Father thinking about how He delighted in me because of the life of His Son, I was offended by my breath. I craked the joke in my mind… “OH! God I know you don’t delight in the breath!” And quietly I heard back, “OH! YES I DO!”

My heavenly Father delights in spending time with me no matter what I look like, smell like, or even what state my heart is in. This delight comes from the perfect life of Jesus which He exchanges with me (also a truth shown to us in Mark ). He looks at the life of Christ and is able to enjoy His time with me, and use the time to call me be more like His perfect Son.

I will say, God is maybe the only one I can allow myself to be close to with my stinky bed breath, but through His acceptance of my whole stinky self (and through his cleaning up the stink) I find a way to move closer to those around me—well, after I brush.