We’re hosting a Ginny’ Owens acoustic house show two weeks from tomorrow.

I’m outside wiping down the siding, railings, window sills and window boxes in our front porch. They’re full of dried up bugs and leaves from fall, crusty things, gross disgusting dirty things, caked on muddy things from barn swallows who attempted to nest on our front door. I want to wash it all away. I want to make it clean. I want to make all things new. For Ginny. For our guests. For my husband. For me. Make us new, Heavenly Father.

It feels good to wash and wipe surfaces. But it’s all surface, isn’t it? All this cleaning, all this preparing? This house show isn’t about that. Because we’ll never be clean, we’ll never be wholly pure, we’ll never be whole on earth.

So I stop.

The realization washes over me at the window box filled with coral geraniums and tiny, but sturdy multi-colored flowers I discovered at our nursery’s mid-season sale.

The only thing she’ll see is my heart.

There’s grace in that realization.

Freedom.

Freedom to be me. Fully me.

The only thing she’ll see is my heart.

God’s preparing this moment, this concert, to help me see that life’s not about appearances. It’s about my heart. Where is your heart? Where is your soul? Where do you stand today? Are you all about appearances and making things look clean and sparkly on the surface, or are you working in deeper, hidden places?

I stop and create. These words, they fill me. These words, they nourish my soul. My fingers fly like the wind. Because I was created to express God’s beauty, God’s truth, God’s wisdom.

Today, as I clean and make all things new on my front porch, I know one truth for sure.

The only thing Ginny will see is my heart.

The only thing God sees is my heart.

And the only thing people really need to see when they come to our house for that concert – is faith, hope, love and the sweet Spirit who will meet them here. Right where they are. Clean and unclean. Tended and untended. Always loved. As is.