A friend walked into the house just yesterday.
"Smells like somebody's been baking", she said.
"It's a lying candle," I told her.
The smell in my kitchen was nothing more than a Blueberry Blitz Tyler candle. I'm no baker. I burn pop tarts. The smell also covers up the large bag of garbage in the hall which holds pizza rolls, the closest I got to cooking this week.
Recently I attended a party with peanut brittle and chocolate peanut patties. They were displayed on a festive plate wrapped with Saran wrap. I ended up telling several people that my sweets came from Market Basket and I'd simply trashed the plastic containers. Presentation is important. Am I right?
I don't mean to give anyone a false impression. If I'm being honest, which I have a habit of being...... to a fault, I'd say that the facades I present are to convince myself (more than anyone else) that I'm everything I should be. The festive plate made me feel closer to the mark. Isn't "the mark really just that invisible success line we draw for ourselves as women?
There's a Super Woman cape calling to me from that finish line I race toward each day, but that cape is one I'll never wear. And I whisper to myself that I want to wear one; to show myself and the world that I take fine care of my kids and my husband. My cape will tell me what a good friend I am, and church member too.
But wearing a Super Woman cape would be a lie.
Despite my effort, I'm weak
and vulnerable and sometimes afraid;
nothing like a Super Woman, I'm insufficient on my own.
Thinking I have it all together is anything but truthful. I'm a mess.
It's my realization of my inadequacy and my trust in one who is more than sufficient that wins me a cape; a great covering.
I possess a Super Cape. It was given to me. When I'm burning my lying candle at both ends, falling short, my Savior is there beside me and he covers me with that cape. And I'm reminded that I'm enough as I remember the word spelled out in bold letters across my cape's back.........G R A C E.
“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.
2 Corinthians 12:9