escaping the lukewarm

Well right now I'm breathing, blogging, and...flossing muh teeths.

If you wur wondering.

(strawberry alert hurhur) Today was a muggy, muggy day. High of 88/low of doesnt-matter;still-warmish, and a humidity of about 2093480293 percent. But it never quite rained, so all the water was forever stuck in the atmosphere - all, like, holding its breath and clenching its eyes shut and crouching on the verge of curling into droplets but never quite going over the invisible line to condensificationing....you know? It was sunny and gross, wet and breezy, simultaneously beautiful and a little suffocating. 

So, naturally, I was feeling 

and looking

pretty gross all day so at the end of it, decided to take a c o o l shower - uncharacteristic, because I usually like to take (almost) scaldingly hot showers...even in the summer, sometimes. And today's shower was weird. Not only because of the novelty/rarity, but because the faucet seemed confused that I wanted to take such a non-hot shower and kept wavering annoyingly, endearingly, between c o o l and w a r m until I coaxed its handle gently but decisively to the left, at which it finally gave in and allowed me a decisively cool shower. Closer to the plunge into freezing than I ever get in the span of my usual 12-minute showers. But anyways this is getting too too strawberry-ish so here's the point:

As I was taking my decisively cool shower, I noticed a small trend currently active in my life (trend being 2 whole instances): just like my escape from shower climate dilly-dallyings, I am actively escaping (err trying to. trying. to. escape.) lukewarmity in my walk with Christ. A little while ago, I had a conversation with someone who was trying to explain to me why lukewarm Christianity was even worse than being completely cold and far from God. How being bitterly distanced and heartbreakingly glacial is a preferable alternative to halfhearted indecisiveness, right in the middle of the spectrum (which reminds me of...mediocrity, but that's another story). At first, I really didn't get it. How could "super-far-from-God" be better than "kinda-far-from-God"? The kinda-far kind of far-ness means less distance to run back. It means, at least, glimpses and touches, though that's a far cry from direct embrace, I know. The kinda-far kind of far-ness keeps you kinda-safe from the biggest dangers, because while you're kinda-far from saving grace, you're also kinda-far from the cliffs. Kinda.

But God has been opening my kinda-closed eyes to the kinda-obvious answer lately. Through shivery building conversations and introspective coffee dates and decisively cool showers, I've been realizing exactly how scary lukewarmity is. Lukewarm means numbness. Lukewarm is blind to itself. Lukewarm makes you resigned to, and okay with: "Oh well." Because of the lack of complete lack - because you (I, we) don't feel the ache of an absolute void, you (I, we) think this kinda far awayness okay...when it's so not. It's a self-sustained monster, only medium-level scary. AHH the worst kind of them all. At least when the monster is huge and smelly, roaring and in your face, when you're suffering sorely with all your soul, you know you have to do something about it. Run away. Poke its boogery nose with your wand. Start using exclamation points!! So someone will hear and come to help!!!!!! YOU KNOW?!?!!!

At least complete cold pushes you to push yourself to be not so far away anymore. So yes. I get it. In these redundantly-expressed ways and much more, lukewarmity, sneaky and subtle, is the real creature (woah)to be feared. 

Yeah, I'm kind of dumb. This lukewarm thing is actually a huge phenomenon, apparently - google says so. Oops - minus 10 points for living under a religious rock.

Scalding, please.
P.S. I kind of cannot believe that I haven't used the word "tepid" this entire post.

Lukewarm, the conceited jerk, makes you write entire blog posts about itself and then end them with thoughts like

breathing, breathing, ...and teeth-flossing :-(

What a tricky, tricky rascal indeed.