I used to feel ashamed of having dishes piled up or toys scattered through the house. In my beginner mom days where toddlers were finger painting vacuums with peanut butter or muraling the walls with sharpie, I would pray that no one would need to come over in the midst of that mess. Please Dear God people will think I'm the worst mom if they saw my home right now. But I wasn't the worst mom, I just liked to plop myself next to them (or under them) and yell out "swiper no swiping!" and watch their little eyes light up when Swiper would exclaim "oh man!" and run off empty handed. I loved watching their look of gratification thinking they had actually made a difference in the outcome...even if it was the 97th time they had seen that episode. Who knows where Dora would be today if Ava and I hadn't sat together on pillows and blankets in the middle of the floor and yelled that louder.
And then we entered the world of social media, where you all needed to see my adorable mess makers... But in order to post pictures of my darlings, I needed to at least make it look decent. In one corner. If you ripped a picture out of Home & Garden magazine and the front page picture of a newspaper after a major catastrophic natural disaster and put them side by side, that was what my home looked like.
And my life too.
It wasn't until recently that I came to the realization that I was not alone in this "clean a corner of the living room to take a picture of my kids" battle. This whole time, I thought I was the ONLY one with a mess.
So if there are people who can relate to the literal mess in my life, there must be people who can relate to the metaphorical mess in my life, I determined.
& again I find I am using my mess to understand the message & I've been thinking a lot lately of how God wants to use me going forward. It's going a lot like:
Me-"ahhh, this mess is so cozy. I know where everything is. I'm fine. Totally fine...I mean if anyone saw what I was actually going though, I would look a mess but I just won't let anyone close enough. They can text me."
God-"Let me handle it."
Me-"No, God. I can fix this. Shoot, someone is asking me really personal questions. They're getting closer. Whoa, back up. Back up back up! You'll see my mess! Aagghhh, let me just clean a corner and let them in. Ok, ok. That was close."
God-"Give it to me."
Me-"No, I told you, I'll take care of it. Look, this is going well...see this corner is, er..it was clean. I was starting to fix it! I had some things taken care of, but it got to be too much and now you can't even tell that I did anything."
God-"Let me in, I'll take care of it all."
Me-"Let me just think about it for awhile. I know what you would have me do, but hold on, I can't just let you come in here and start throwing away all of these things I've been holding onto. Let me just figure out my next move and THEN I'll let you in."
God-"I already figured it out for you, if you would just.."
Me- Faceplants. Mess exposed. Square one. "God, help! I messed it up again! I just needed a little more time to figure it out and now it's even worse than before and I need you."
God-"Finally."
Rewind & press play like a thousand million times and that has been my entire adult life.
Maybe it's yours too. Maybe I'm not the only one snapping pictures in the pristine corner of my life. Maybe we can start handing it over sooner. God is bigger than every single laundry basket full of mismatched socks we're hanging onto "just incase".
The next is directly connected to the now. I pray we can be more obedient in the now so that He can equip us for the next.
