from martha to mary | personality or habit?

You know, when it all is said and done, I just want to be known for having a heart after God – just like David – because David did what God wanted him to do and that’s it – that’s what He wants more than anything.  I want to be so consumed with Him that all of the “things” or “roles” I had craved before, trying to earn His love and your love and their love, come naturally and from a different motive.

But can I just be honest?  (I don’t know why people say that line – including me – because I mean, really?  Am I not being honest already? Maybe I should change it to But can I just be really transparent here? because that’s what I think I mean) Right now it’s still hard to come from a totally pure motive.  I know that I definitely am coming from there more than from the wrong motives these days, but I still fight that urge to perform.

Why?  Because for 30 some years that’s what I did.  It became a habit – a lifestyle – so ingrained in me that I couldn’t tell where I stopped and where it started.  Performance was me.  I was Performance.  We were so intertwined that if you had confronted me about it, I would have said, “That’s just who I am – you can’t change my personality – this is how I’m built.”   I had become so comfortable in this mode of living and operating that I didn’t want to change it.

Because in my mind, changing it meant changing the very core of who I was (so I thought).  So all of that time, all of that effort, all of performing would go away and what would I be left with?  I thought I would be left with nothing but a weak, sappy, everyonewalkalloverme kind of personality complete with the inability to do anything.  I thought that I would have to become the complete opposite – do a complete 180 degree turn – of what I currently was – of who I currently was.

And that terrified me.

And angered me.

I still couldn’t quite understand what was so wrong with being a Martha.  I mean, she made things happen.  Who would’ve fed Jesus that day, huh?  Who would’ve cleaned the house getting ready for Him?  Who would have sent out the party invites?  Certainly not lazy Mary.  Nope.  She was too busy “loving and thinking about” Jesus.  She was too enamored with Him to do anything.

Hmph.

So I got Martha.  I. got. Martha.

And I admired her.  I admired her for having the guts to say to Jesus, “Hey!  Make her get up and do something dang it.”  (ok – that’s a slight personal interpretation of the scripture, but I know she must have thought it!)

From time to time God would place people in my life who would challenge my way of thinking – who would challenge the facade I had up – who would call me out on certain behaviors.  I’d like to say that instantly I was a changed person.  But I wasn’t.  Instead, over the course of the last 10 years, He has been working on me – sometimes with a jackhammer (well, it sure feels like it) or at times with a warm cloth and a gentle touch.  But He hasn’t stopped working.

So here I am – 10 years later – able to admit my “Martha-ness” and even able to let go of some of that performing that I did so well.  I’ve come to realize that my personality hasn’t changed one bit – but my heart sure has changed a lot.

And for that, I’m thankful.