Last summer I did an internship with a police department outside Detroit. It was 150 hours riding along with middle aged men. Some of them creepy, some of them weird, and some who I had way too much fun with. That experience made me realize I could never marry a cop..mainly because most of them were cheating or had cheated on their wives.. Anyways.. The traffic unit was my favorite. Those guys were real with me right off the bat and I have a sincere appreciation for genuine people. They made no effort to cover up their laziness and the easiness of their job. Some nights they wrote their tickets in a couple hours then ordered pizza and went back to the station and watched a movie. But these guys filled me in on everyone. They gave me the low down on anyone I had worked with and anyone I would. They told me about this one officer who was really preachy. He talked about his Christianity openly and made no secrets about his faith. However, this guy had an evident problem with pornography and was also very open about his attraction to other women, even though he was married with two kids and these other officers were very aware of that. To these men, this immediately discredited this guy. They probably would have been able to appreciate him and respect him had he not had this lust problem. There was another officer who told me he was a Christian. This was one sentence where he didn't use the f-bomb and a brief moment between his spits of chewing tobacco juice into his pop bottle (that was really nasty, btw!) You see, I understand grace and the obvious need these men have for it, but unfortunately, to many people in the world it appears as hypocrisy.
Of course, my faith too came up in many conversations. These men would ask me what the worst thing I had ever done was and the only thing I could come up with was that I toilet papered my principals house when I was a senior in high school (She was a good sport!) . I mean, I told them that I could be selfish and harsh sometimes and tried to show them that I have things I do struggle with.. but to them, they couldn't get past the fact that I have never used a swear word in my life. The down side of this, of course, is that I have never really felt like I had a testimony per say.
But..I have been thinking about this lately, and it made me realize the grace that God has on my life. As I was re-living some childhood experiences last night with some friends I started to realize that peer pressure has never been an issue for me. I was too stubborn to do anything because someone else wanted me to. My stubbornness has its downsides and those are always what I have focused on and tried to change, and rightfully so. But, maybe God is going to use this about me to reach people that others can't? I want to be real and connect with them, and through that my weaknesses may show through but maybe because the things I struggle with are so minuscule to people in the world, they will see past those and be able to see my savior? Maybe as I reflect grace upon them they will see the genuineness in that.. I sure hope so anyway.. because it would be really great to see God work through this weakness of mine and use it to somehow.. maybe?
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