So, I now know that I am a grown-up because … brace yourselves … I have begun drinking coffee! Not just drinking coffee, but craving coffee, thinking about drinking coffee. I am 27 years old and have never liked coffee before. I think most people are driven to coffee in college, but not me; Coca-Cola was enough for me in college. I have now, finally, this late in the game, been driven to coffee by MY TWO-YEAR-OLD!!

To put it mildly, the last few weeks have been kind of tough. The Terrible Twos are definitely upon us. And before you (Momma) get defensive about the two-year-olds in your life, let me say, I love my two-year-old passionately; two is adorable, hilarious, and exciting, but it is also kicking my tail! I fall in bed mentally, emotionally, and physically exhausted every night, and every morning I feel about the same. Perhaps everything seems a little worse right now because my free, always-available babysitter (my momma) left town for nearly two weeks, but nonetheless two is extremely challenging.

And I have to say that I’ve been pretty disappointed with myself lately. No one likes to see themselves yelling at their two-year-old, and every night I lay in bed with that one major meltdown of the day still weighing heavy on my heart. And I feel embarrassed. I hate for God to see that; I always want to show God my best, and I hate for Him to realize that I am a yeller, that I can, on occasion, lose my temper with a two-year-old child … my two-year-old child … the one He gave me to love and protect.

It’s easy to want to blame the circumstances. “Well, my child is particularly difficult … It’s not really my fault; the situation was unfair … If he weren’t so heavy, so hard to carry, so difficult to manage … If I weren’t so tired … If he would just hold still …” But I’m reminded of an analogy C.S. Lewis once used. If you go in the cellar in the dark and flip the light on, you may see all of the rats and bugs scurrying away. You can’t blame the light and say, “Well, if there had been more warning, there wouldn’t have been any rats … If I hadn’t switched on the light so quickly …” The truth is that the rats were scurrying away because they were in the cellar, not because the light was switched on. And the truth is, that yes, I can behave better in easier circumstances, but the reason I lose my temper is not because Caleb has misbehaved, but because I already have that sin in my heart. Who I am in the most trying circumstances, is, perhaps, who I really am. It’s not about the yelling or the anger and frustration, it’s about the ugliness that is and has always been in my heart.

I had breakfast with my dad this week, and something he said (I can’t remember it exactly, I had a toddler crawling on me at the time) eventually led me to this thought: God is not surprised by my sin; it never shocks Him. He, of course, already knew it was there, and perhaps, just perhaps, He allows me to lose it in these situations so that I can see what He has seen all along. And no, of course He doesn’t like my sin; He wants to get rid of it. But I have to recognize it for what it is before He can heal me. I have to see the ugly, dirtiness of my heart before He can clean it. I’ve prayed many times from Psalm 139, “Search me, O God, and know my heart!” I guess I wasn’t really prepared for what that would look like.

But I have been so comforted by the birth of Christ this Christmas because it is such a beautiful picture of what God is willing to do for us. You see, God is not scared of dirtiness and ugliness. He embraces it. When Jesus, God Himself, God With Us, was born, He didn’t choose to be born in a beautiful hotel suite or even a modern, sterile hospital, He chose a dirty, ugly stable. A stable with cow manure and mud, a stable that was cold and dark . . . just like my heart. But Jesus moved in there, and the beautiful thing about Jesus is that when He dwells in the ugliest, dirtiest of places, He makes them holy. He shines His overpowering grace and truth on the dark places, and suddenly they are not dirty or ugly anymore, they are beautiful. He can turn a dirty, ugly stable into a Holy Temple where worshipers gather, and He can turn my dirty, ugly heart into a dwelling place for the King of Kings.

Last night I was searching my Bible, needing something more than coffee to sustain me, and I found this verse in Philippians, already underlined and starred: “He who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:6). What a great relief that God is the one doing a good work in me, not me fixing myself, and it is a work which He intends to complete. Which reminds me of one of my favorite verses, “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh” (Ezekiel 36:26).

And perhaps that is one of the greatest Christmas presents of all … my heart that God is continually renewing and softening and the work in me that He will complete at the day of Christ. Glory to God in the Highest and Merry Christmas!