Snoring
“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” 1 John 1:9
When I was in eighth grade, I broke my nose. Not once, but twice. Once trying to learn how to do a handspring at a middle school gymnastics practice, and once running into a railing.
After the second time, my nose was very red and just the tiniest bit crooked. My parents took me to the doctor, and I was told that I would eventually need surgery to reset my nose. But it wasn’t urgent or necessary unless my nose began to cause me pain or problems. Within a few months, there was almost no physical evidence of how much I had put my nose through. The only consequence was that I began to snore, typically quite loudly.
Now snoring doesn’t need to be a big deal; it isn’t something that anyone does intentionally. But I do know that it is very annoying to other people. The hard part about snoring is that there’s not much I can do about it. Once I’m asleep, all I can do is hope for the best and hope that it doesn’t happen. I quickly became very self-conscious about my snoring, making things like sleepovers and camp less fun because I always dreaded sleeping in the same room as other people and keeping them awake at night.
I eventually overcame that fear. I wear strips on my nasal passages sometimes to help with opening up my nasal passages, and some times even take medicine. But I think that the real root of my anxiety was that I didn’t like having such obvious, unchangeable imperfections. I want to pretend that my imperfections don’t exist, but my snoring prevents me from doing that.
We can only have a real authentic relationship with the Lord if we are willing to embrace our imperfections so that we can be made perfect in him. None of us are perfect, none of us can perfectly and neatly hide our brokenness, instead, we must confess our brokenness to the Lord, so that he can make us whole.