I’m not talking about my kitchen. Or my bathroom, or my closet, or even my junk drawer. If you know anything about me, you know there are rarely any messes in my house. My junk drawer has dividers and I know exactly what’s in each section.
I do need to brag a bit here, however, and tell you what currently remains intact in my son’s bedroom several days post-construction. Let’s just say it involves quite a few sets of sheets, a dozen towels, and an entire roll of blue painting tape. It isn’t the most structurally sound fort, but it takes up at least half of Charlie’s humble abode. I’ll also let you know the other half of the room is taken up by legos, which are scattered all over the floor in no apparent pattern or organizational method whatsoever. Clearly, my hundred dollar an hour therapy is working for me.
Unfortunately, the mess I’m talking about has nothing to do with forts. It has nothing to do with dust or dirt or dishes in the sink or thousands of legos spread out on carpet I’d really like to vacuum.
The mess I’m talking about is in my mind. It’s in my heart. It’s in my life.
I’m a mess. I’m broken. I’m damaged. I’m flawed. I’m a sinner. I make lots and lots and lots and lots and lots - I’ll stop there but I could go on until 2064 – of mistakes.
I am a mess.
The truth?
So are you.
Are your eyes widening in shock as you prepare to defend yourself until your death because, so help you, no idiot middle-aged stay at home mother who’s never done anything very important is going to tell you about your cleanliness? If so, stop reading. This post isn’t for you.
On the other hand, if you’ve read the book of Genesis, and you know a little something about the whole apple in the garden ordeal that separated mankind from God and means WE ARE ALL BROKEN, at least until Jesus returns, takes the fruit from that tree of knowledge of good and evil, and makes the most delicious apple pie we’ve ever tasted from it, forge ahead with me into my mess . . . and yours. Because it’s there. I assure you. The Bible says so.
In a nutshell, the first three chapters of Genesis go something like this: God made the world and everything in it, and it was all totally awesome. He made a man in his image – his name was Adam - but the man couldn’t remember to pick up his clothes from the dry cleaners on time, so God made a woman from the man – her name was Eve - to be Adam’s helper. Adam and Eve were living the good life. They were living in this gorgeous slice of paradise called the Garden of Eden, which I imagine looked a lot like Maui a few centuries ago. They spent their time running around unashamed, even though they were naked, enjoying all of the interesting and beautiful things God created, while also being in direct contact with the creator. If you look up the definition of ‘Eden’ in the dictionary, it says Eden is a state of bliss, a delightful place, ultimate happiness.
Kinda makes you want to visit, huh?
So, Adam and Eve had it all. Their lives were perfection. Until . . . that nasty old snake showed up. You see, when Eve got finished doing all those things she had to do as man’s helper, you know, cleaning toilets and folding laundry and making dentist appointments, she was hungry. And I’ll be darned if that sneaky reptile didn’t convince Eve that the only thing she wanted to eat was a piece of fruit from the one tree in the entire garden that God said she couldn’t eat from. Sure enough, she ate the apple. Don’t you think Eve and Snow White would have been really good friends?
The story goes on to tell us how Eve then convinced Adam to take a bite from the same apple. Sucker. But folks, the part you really need to understand is that when Eve chose to believe the lies of the snake (AKA Satan), and sink her perfect teeth into that forbidden fruit, we were all doomed.
Damn her.
In Genesis 3:14 God says, in response to what Adam and Eve had done, “Cursed are you . . .”
I know. It’s harsh. God goes on to announce all the things that will now be wrong with our lives because of Adam and Eve's bad decision – fights between husbands and wives over how much a pair of shoes should cost, labor pains that feel like a steel cable being squeezed as tightly as possible around one’s stomach, ungrateful children who sneak out of the house at two in the morning to drink beer with their buddies, and on and on and on.
Now, I’m not going to get into the whole reason for the fall of mankind, but you really should learn about it if you haven’t already. It involves this unbelievably cool dude named Jesus who comes to save mankind from their sin, and it’s like, the most incredible story you’ll ever hear. It’s lengthy, no doubt. Basically, you have to read the whole Bible to hear the whole story, but I guarantee, it’s worth every second it takes to read. Mainly because the many seconds and minutes and hours it takes to read is nothing compared to what it’s about, which is eternity.
Still, we aren’t going there today. Today, we’re sticking with our mess.
You see, what I’ve been thinking about a lot lately is . . . we need to be more comfortable with the mess in our life. We need to be more open about it. The mess is there. It’s all around us, all the time. And it’s dirty. It’s ugly. It makes us want to run and hide and pretend we don’t see it.
We can probably clean up some of the mess. It might take a great deal of work, serious amounts of prayer, and, if your mess is as big as mine, thousands of dollars worth of chatting with a trained professional. I believe it is possible for us to make our lives less messy by changing our hearts and minds and actions. But I don’t think we can clean up all of our mess. Some of it we just need to accept as who we are. We need to be comfortable with our mess, because it’s been there all along, in some form or fashion.
Maybe your mess involves addiction. Maybe it’s about abuse. Maybe your mess entails an eating disorder or a mental illness or an inability to keep commitments. Maybe it has to do with overspending or anger management or maybe you’re having a torrid affair with your boss.
My mess looks like an otherwise healthy wife and mother of two who longs to be counting her blessings instead of struggling with perfectionism, body image issues, insecurity, obsessive-compulsive tendencies, and severe anxiety. Like I said, it’s dirty. It’s ugly. It makes me want to run and hide and pretend I don’t see it. Most of all, it makes me want to run and hide and pretend no one else can see it.
I'm not giving in to my mess. I’m on a quest to clean up the mess in my life every single day . . . for my husband, for my children, for myself. I think I’m making some progress, but I imagine my quest will be a long one. In fact, it might be a lifelong one.
In the meantime, I’m learning to share my mess with others because, really, why wouldn’t I? We’ve already determined I’m not the only person with a mess here. If I refuse to share my mess with the people I love, I’m shutting them out. And it works both ways. If the people I love refuse to share their messes with me, in my opinion, they are rejecting me. They are proclaiming cleanliness that doesn’t exist, and I don’t want to be a part of that. I want to surround myself with people who are real, who are honest, who are authentic. I want to spend my time with people who will go out to dinner with me, and over a glass of wine, tell me how badly they screwed up that day, and the day before that, and maybe even the day before that. We can get around to counting our blessings too, after the second glass of wine perhaps, because in the end, no matter how big the messes in our lives are, there are always blessings to be found among the rubble.
I guess what I’m truly after is a life filled with people who are willing to dive into the rubble . . . a life filled with people who aren't afraid to show me their rubble . . . a life filled with people who see my rubble, yet choose to walk inside of it with me, take my hand, pray with me, and help me sort through the mess to find the blessings we both know are there.
