The Nasty Grinch.

Before I start into this, some of you have wondered what it is I do in the wedding industry. I did some planning and some coordinating for a while and now…well…I design wedding veils.
Yep. There you have it. If you are getting married or know anyone who is, I can help make them beautiful.
Check out some of my stuff here and here.

With that out of the way, the Grinch didn’t steal Christmas this year.
Now I realize that that goes against the title, but to abate the fears of my adorable 3 and 6 year old nieces we had to convince them, night after night that, indeed, the Grinch A. Is not real and B. He won’t be stealing all their presents.

How adorable. The thought makes me laugh. While I have never actually seen the movie, except for the 5 minutes my nieces saw that scared them out of their wits, I think I understand a little bit about Grinch-ness.

You are probably wondering what’s going on in my little heart as I say I know something about Grinch-ness, and not three weeks ago I told you that I woke up feeling more like the Ice Queen than the Wolf Queen. I’m ok, really. I promise. But there has been just a little “harshness” in me lately and I don’t really know why. Sweetness and kindness, I admit, have never been the first two words that come to mind when people describe me, but this snappy-ness has been a little out of character, even for me.

I was praying about it recently and I think I have a little lack of joy in my life. No apparent reason, it’s just where I find myself. So I continue to pray about it. I have a few thoughts on it, but I will get into that some other time.

I was visiting a friend last week and we were talking about those jars people have that they put money in when they do something bad. You know, like “Swear Jars” or “Nail-biting Jars” or “Laziness Jars.” How it works is that whenever you do said jar title (swear, bite your nails, or exhibit laziness) action you have to put money in the jar. Like as a punishment.

We were laughing about them, trying to figure out which jar we would particularly need and it occurred to me that I think sometimes I need a “Nasty Jar.”

How is it possible that we are capable of being our nastiest to the people we love the most? Or the most impatient with them, or the most rude with them, whatever?

Is it the classic case of familiarity breeds contempt? Is it that we know we are safe with them and therefore we can kind of “kick-the-cat” because they won’t leave us?
I’m not totally sure about this phenomena, I just know it exists.
Regardless of what produces it, I have decided that it needs to be curbed in my life.
Hence, The Nasty Jar. I now have to pay whenever I am nasty…and I hate spending money.
And would you believe that it has helped? Like I didn’t snap but once at any of my family the entire week we were together. What a Christmas miracle: loads of people and children in the house and no snapping.
Ha.

Now, sure, maybe this is not really spiritual, threatening yourself into good behavior, for surely that’s not what the Lord does. He saves and gives grace and there is always abundant mercy daily new.
But it does say something about wages, doesn’t it? Like do we sometimes forget that all of those wages…the wages of sin…the wages of my nastiness…did in fact have to be paid by SOMEONE?

Someone asked me what I am going to do with all the money I had to put in the nasty jar and I said, “Probably give it to the person I was nasty to.”

And in some reversed way, isn’t that what Jesus did?
Like, I was nasty, but then HE put money in the nasty jar; he is the one who made the sacrifice to pay the price of MY nastiness; but then he turned around and gave me, the one who had been nasty, the reward of the paid wages—the money-filled Nasty Jar. He poured out jars full of grace, payment, blessing, onto me because of the sin that I HAD COMMITTED.  Like, because I accepted his saving, I benefitted from the nastiness.

I think this is what Paul comes in and talks about in Romans 6. “What shall we say then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?” (verse 1-2)

I mean, if we did the math, and if salvation is like the nasty jar, the Roman argument does make some kind of sense: the more I am nasty, the more money Jesus will put in the jar, therefore the more I will benefit in the long run.
But no.
Because being nasty so that I can receive more grace is not a blessing to me, it’s a trampling of him, and that’s what the Romans hadn’t quite figured out yet. Jesus did not pay our wages to give us license to sin and sin and sin and sin so that we build up more grace coming towards us, he paid the wages more in like he paid the check.

Have you ever read that verse earlier in Romans? Chapter 4 verse 7. “Blessed are they whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered….”

It’s like when you go out to a restaurant and order crazy amounts of food, only to get to the end of the night and the person you are with grabs the check. “Oh no, no, no. I couldn’t let you pay for that! I ate so much. I didn’t plan on you paying for it!” you respond. And the person just smiles, doesn’t let go of the bill, and says to you, “I got it covered.” At the thought of their generosity you wish you hadn’t eaten as much, don’t you? You wish you had been more thoughtful of how much they had to pay for you.
That’s the kind of wages Jesus paid. He finalized the bill of sale so that we could leave the restaurant, he didn’t pay for us to gorge ourselves on the endless sin/endless grace buffet.

Now, don’t get all in a huff. I realize and understand to the core of me that there is grace for every time I sin, but does it make sense that grace isn’t a license, it’s a payment?

Our nastiness cost him something, Wolfies. Let’s not trample that.

Money had to be put in the jar. Our junk had to be paid for.
And sometimes the most tangible means have to be put into effect for me to realize that.

~~~

 

Because neither the Grinch nor my Nastiness stole Christmas, we ended up having a capital time.

This is what a 3 year old thinks the Nasty Face looks like.

And this is how a 6 year old does a Nasty Face.

Apparently taking my earrings out and putting them back in again is good for like...hours of fun.

The excitement is....brilliant.

Dont' believe everything you see...he can't actually read yet.

Vacuum boxes make for really good fun on Christmas morning.

Sistas. By law. And love.

I have this massive family. And this is all the grandchildren. Except 7 of them. And would you believe that out of all the grandkids only two of them don't have blue eyes? Yeah. No joke.

A lovely favorite aunt of mine. She is the muse behind the Swag and Buckle, kids. Brilliant.