I bet if most of us had to choose a woman in the Bible we most look up to, it’d likely be the ever-loyal Ruth, or the zealous Mary of Bethany. Or maybe Deborah with that stellar prophetic power, or Esther, with all her indifferent charm. As much as I wish I could identify with Jesus’ mother, or Miriam, or some other heroine of the faith, I have always related most to the alabaster box girl found in Luke 7:47.

She didn’t even have a name, but she earned her place in history as the woman who shocked and agitated Jesus’ followers by breaking her expensive perfume jar and washing Jesus’ feet. Men called her extreme and foolish, but Jesus smiled. He knew the motivation behind her worship. Despite popular myth, the Bible doesn’t say she was a prostitute, but it does infer she’d done some serious sinning.

In those days, a jar of perfume could cost the equivalent of a year’s wage, or in a woman’s case, her entire dowry. How wasteful could this impulsive girl be? The onlookers didn’t understand, because they’d never been so strangled by sin that every breath was a pain. They’d never felt the unbelievable sense of freedom this woman now rejoined in, knowing her past had been erased by the light of her savior’s eyes.

I rarely make it through this Bible story without stifling a sob because I am so this girl. It’s a little humiliating to put in print, but I think it’s so important we refute the pride-infused pretense that everything was just fine and dandy before we found the Lord. Especially when God gets all the glory.

Since the age of fourteen until finding Jesus, I’d slept my way from man to man, desperately searching for security and approval in the wake of my dad’s death. My angry, lost soul went after every source of escape it could, eventually escalating from drinking to “recreational” drugs during those glorious college years, when I was so bulimic I’d literally pick through garbage in the dorm halls at night filling up before the nightly purge. Classy stuff, I know.

Suffice it to say, when my dumpster fire of a heart finally met Jesus, the forgiveness, mercy, and love I experienced ran deep. The feeling of relief was nearly unbearable. My redemption story may never be sharable over Christmas dinner, but it’s a journey I’m so grateful for.

When God pulls us from the pit of our filth, misery, and self-destruction we’re given a gift. We get to live the rest of our days with a profoundly deep sense of gratefulness and joy we would’ve never experienced without veering mightily off the path. I’m not advocating we glamourize our past moral failures in any way, but if your story is a similar one, then it’s time to take back your voice, and celebrate.

Back to the alabaster girl. When Jesus overheard the condescending disciples, he defended her by saying, “I tell you, her sins—and they are many—have been forgiven, so she has shown me much love. But a person who is forgiven little shows only little love.”

Friends with a “darker” past…even if your extreme sins are recent, or happened since being saved…if you’ve repented,
you’re forgiven. And so, you have a gift.

I think sometimes we feel ashamed or embarrassed of our past, especially in Christian circles where so many gals have walked with the Lord since childhood, rocking purity rings, salvaging their v cards, and well, not blowing lines of coke in the bathroom stalls of the club. Woulda been a smoother life path, for sure, but I never, ever want to hide or forget the disastrous state of my soul before knowing the Lord.

We can’t undo the scars or erase the issues me might even still be working through from our past, but we can embrace the silver lining of a very deep, very real closeness to God because of it. I don’t particularly enjoy bringing up all my past grossness, but women need to know and understand the wild capacity of God’s mercy.

I think sometimes we feel pressure to present squeaky clean versions of ourselves to appear worthy of our “Christian girl” personas at work or play.  But our complicated, messy stories are the exact narratives the world is dying to hear. Not only is our testimony more powerful when we embrace how far we’ve come, but I believe we’re meant to produce fruit from those dark, shameful things we’ve been delivered from.

There’s a reason God allowed Saul, a Christian-killing hypocrite, to personally encounter Jesus and eventually carry the Gospel. It’s the same reason God chose David, another murderer with a weakness for bathing women, to claim the sole honor of being called “a man after God’s own heart.” Sin isn’t their most important commonality. It’s their unbelievable love and joy in the Lord because of how much they’ve been forgiven from.

Don’t let the enemy censor your beautiful redemption story. God reached down further into the mire, searched longer through the night, and worked harder for your rescue…and that is a truth worth posting. We may never get to bring Him perfume in heaven, but I can’t wait to run to Jesus’ feet someday, screaming in gratitude. I might just never leave.

Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven—as her great love has shown. But whoever has been forgiven little loves little.- (Jesus) Luke 7:47

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