I am a Dipwad

After the lovely post my sister did early this week making me sound WAY more awesome than I really am, I thought we should all come back to reality.

(Thanks L, by the way. You know that Sheryl Crow song where she sings “Are you strong enough to be my man?” and then later on she says “Lie to me; I promise I’ll believe.”? Well, I’ve always loved that lyric.  I realized that this is a good instance of you being strong enough to be my sister, as I totally believed all those nice things that you said about me–even the ones that weren’t true. 😉 )

Since I know many of you read this blog for no other reason than to see that YOU, in fact, are actually WAY more awesome than me, I will return to the normal self-deprecating confessional style that we all know and love.

Therefore, the “I am a Dipwad” post.

Now, you may think that there is no reason for an “I am a Dipwad” post as it is self-evident; however, this post was actually inspired by and incident that happened last Sunday night at our church community group, and so all week I have been avoiding simmering this post in my mind.

Do I need to define “dipwad”? I hope not. But , for those of you not from ‘roun’ here, it is the slimy mess of chaw packed into the bottom of a redneck’s (or very old lady’s) lower lip or perhaps a baseball player’s cheek, which prevents him/her from talking normally and occasionally produces a thin, tea-colored string of saliva.  It is totally nasty. 

Okay, so this is how I am a dipwad.

See, I did a very dipwadish thing.  We were sitting around discussing our Bible passage for the week, James 5, which Jeremy and I were sort of leading, but of course in my unavoidable way, I had managed to start talking too much as though it were “The Low Ryder Hour”, or some such.  We were discussing the rich and the poor, which of course made me want to gab on and on in my atrocious way.

One man in the group asked a very interesting and provocative question. He said, “What would you do if Jesus showed up in your bedroom tonight and told you that he wanted you to give away all your savings?”

Now, PEOPLE (please imagine triple snap), y’all know what I was thinking!! (If you don’t, here ’tis the long version.)

The man who posed the question began to share about how it was a struggle to know what was intended for the protection and well-being of his family and what should be for God.  It could and should have been a very good discussion where lots of people got to share.

But, I’ll be honest, I wasn’t really listening because I was waiting for him to take a breath, so I could talk.  I then I said . . . .

Before I tell you what I said, I would like to refer you to this lovely post, which details some of my less heinous attributes.

Anyway, I said, “Well, if Jesus came into my room, it would not be hard for me at all to know what to say. It would be EASY!” (I did some dramatic hand gesture.) “I know exactly what I would say because we don’t have any savings because we’ve already given it all away.”

I didn’t, but I might has well have said,  “Neener-neener.”  Blow big raspberry in your face.  I may have said a few explanatory things; I cannot remember. I do remember feeling very smug, self-satisfied, and authoritative.

Uggh.  I think I was throwing myself a nice little self-canonization party right there.

Graciously, somehow the conversation went on without anyone pointing out what an enormous metaphorical dipwad I was being.

And no one, thankfully, said, “Hey, let’s just read here in Matt 6 about what an ENORMOUS Friggin’ HYPOCRITE, Katrina is!”

Matthew 6: 1-3 ¹ “Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.   ² “So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets (or at home group), as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. ³ But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, ⁴ so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”

I will tell you what DID happen though. My “reward” was a big, fat dose of feeling like crap, as though I got to swallow a nice, nasty, plug of dipwad.  In about 5-10 minutes after my statement, while I was admittedly still going on and on about some other point (camels going through needles as I recall), the Holy Spirit began to remind me that it was Him, not me, that should be talking.

Well, I ignored Him.

(I hope you are gasping.)

Then, because J had to go help Dylan have the world’s longest poo in the bathroom, I was on my own with my assumed leadership and I continued to wax eloquent on how we managed our money, ever so well.

(I hope you are gagging.) 

Then, the whole thing finally wrapped up and by the time we got home, I realized that I had made a gigundous butt-munch of myself in front of our whole group.

. . . .and even inadvertently attempted to belittle them by bragging about how the poor are blessed

. . . and of course I implied that J and I are poor, as evidenced by our small house. (As you know, I like to mention our small house for dramatic emphasis whenever I really want to come in with the “shock and awe.”)

. . . and yet, I DID NOT clearly mention that it really says “the poor in spirit,” which means the humble, excluding me from being “blessed” because rather than having poverty of spirit, I managed to trip over my pride in a super-humiliating way. Uggh, again. It is painful to type this post.

That night, so to speak, Jesus came to my bedroom, but let me just say, the conversation did not go easily.  In a very Mr. Knightley-ish way, I heard him say, “Badly done, Katrina. Badly done.”  And He was right, of course.  And he suggested that I apologize, which I kind of did in an pathetic off-handed e-mail way.

“Is confession good for the soul? I hope so, but I don’t know how it does for the blog.

Thus, I need to work on having a little poverty of spirit. I need to really watch my mind, and my words, and my heart because I can really make a mess of even some of the cool things that God has done for us in our finances and life.  What kind of thanks is it if I take the credit for God’s provision by saying that I (mock-pious voice) enabled it with my super-human generousness?!

If you are in my Community Group, I am REALLY sorry that I acted so terribly and even if you didn’t think what I said was terrible, I STILL apologize because my attitude was the WORST.  I hope what you heard (instead of what I actually said) was that GOD has been amazing at providing for us in spite of ourselves.  We haven’t done ANYTHING!  It has been ALL HIM.  I was being a dipwad, which is a gross and nasty thing to be.  Please forgive me.

Also, you may actually need to gag or muzzle me to prevent this sort of thing in the future; I’m tenaciously mouthy.  Is it all too obvious that I missed the week on James 3? I think so. Maybe I need to memorize this

James 3: 1-7

Taming the Tongue

 ¹ Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly. ²We all stumble in many ways. Anyone who is never at fault in what they say is perfect, able to keep their whole body in check.

 ³ When we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we can turn the whole animal. ⁴ Or take ships as an example. Although they are so large and are driven by strong winds, they are steered by a very small rudder wherever the pilot wants to go. ⁵ Likewise, the tongue is a small part of the body, but it makes great boasts. Consider what a great forest is set on fire by a small spark. ⁶ The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole body, sets the whole course of one’s life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.

 ⁷ All kinds of animals, birds, reptiles and sea creatures are being tamed and have been tamed by mankind, ⁸ but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.