You don’t have to clean up before you come to God. He’s the cleanup crew.

Shame tells you to sort yourself out first, which is a trap, since the sorting out was never something you could do alone. So people stay away in the exact season they most need to come back, waiting for a version of themselves that would not need help. You arrive as you are and the cleaning happens after.

If you have been keeping your distance until you are presentable, stop waiting this week. Come back in the middle of the mess, honest about the state of it. The same holds with the people who love you, most of whom have been waiting without any of the conditions you invented.