Messy
I imagine it's true for everybody, that certain parts of life sort of take on a life of their own.
Let's take Aden's room for instance. He has approximately six billion toys. That's counting each Lego separately. And his room most often looks like a tornado ran through the Walmart play section. Every once in a while, to quell the OCD eruption rising up within me, I'll take an hour or two and put everything where it goes.
Because there is a place for everything.
Then the room looks huge and nice and Aden will compliment me on a job well done. To which I, um, sweetly reply that he needs to keep it this way.
Dude can't do it. How on earth he is able to make such a mess in a very short time is just inexplicable. Maybe Toy Story had it right and they're all just party heartying during the day.
Poor Aden would rather chew a toe off than clean up. When we do go through the painful process of making him pick things up, he does a decent job with ninety percent of the room. The rest looks like this:
Or we could consider Trey's hair. Around the start of fifth grade, he asked if we could stop with the military crew cuts already and let him have a style. It took a few months to grow out to where he wanted it. We got the comb and the gel and suddenly the bathroom had new purpose. Half-hours at a time in there, sometimes fixing it before going to bed.
But poor kid got the hair of his Mama and Giga before him. Thick, luxurious hair that, if not forced into a certain mold by obscene amounts of product, flips where it wants to go and makes a fighting stand there. It's a wonder to watch Trey's hair morph through the day. Wakes up looking like he's been electrocuted, smooths it down all nice and 1950s polished, then at some point through the day sits back against something or brushes it with his fingers and all bets are off.
Giga and I just love to run our hands through it and see where it will land.
I pause here to say, who in the heck is that grown-up man child? I mean really, for all the love. End pause.
Messes are everywhere. On the outside for sure. Keeping the dishes clean, laundry done, and Nerf bullets corralled takes a concerted effort and often shows up on my Fitbit as cardio time. It's a losing battle.
But on the inside too.
My pastor and father-in-law pointed at his congregation yesterday and declared, "You. Are. A. Mess."
The sermon was about moving from mess to masterpiece. That we are indeed God's workmanship, but that His workmanship is an ongoing thing.
And in recognizing that I myself am a mess (which of course I already knew), I can know that everyone else is a mess too. Instead of trying to hide this from each other and polishing the outside to make it look like we have it all together, as a church we ought to be able to be honest about our mess and find support and encouragement to work on it. Because we weren't meant to do any of this alone.
It hit home in so many ways, because failure is something that haunts me, even medicated as I am. Who knows whether I should bare my soul here, but I've gained a lot of weight this year and it is getting to me. A lot. I failed to keep it off and take care of my health because, why? Food tastes good? It's my escape and my peace? All that and more.
I'm a mess, y'all. An overweight hot mess.
But I know God's not done, and that somewhere in me is the fight to be who He wants me to be. By His mercy and grace, I will eventually get to masterpiece, as we all will when He calls us home.
Til then, please excuse my mess.
Let's take Aden's room for instance. He has approximately six billion toys. That's counting each Lego separately. And his room most often looks like a tornado ran through the Walmart play section. Every once in a while, to quell the OCD eruption rising up within me, I'll take an hour or two and put everything where it goes.
Because there is a place for everything.
Then the room looks huge and nice and Aden will compliment me on a job well done. To which I, um, sweetly reply that he needs to keep it this way.
Dude can't do it. How on earth he is able to make such a mess in a very short time is just inexplicable. Maybe Toy Story had it right and they're all just party heartying during the day.
Poor Aden would rather chew a toe off than clean up. When we do go through the painful process of making him pick things up, he does a decent job with ninety percent of the room. The rest looks like this:
Or we could consider Trey's hair. Around the start of fifth grade, he asked if we could stop with the military crew cuts already and let him have a style. It took a few months to grow out to where he wanted it. We got the comb and the gel and suddenly the bathroom had new purpose. Half-hours at a time in there, sometimes fixing it before going to bed.
But poor kid got the hair of his Mama and Giga before him. Thick, luxurious hair that, if not forced into a certain mold by obscene amounts of product, flips where it wants to go and makes a fighting stand there. It's a wonder to watch Trey's hair morph through the day. Wakes up looking like he's been electrocuted, smooths it down all nice and 1950s polished, then at some point through the day sits back against something or brushes it with his fingers and all bets are off.
Giga and I just love to run our hands through it and see where it will land.
I pause here to say, who in the heck is that grown-up man child? I mean really, for all the love. End pause.
Messes are everywhere. On the outside for sure. Keeping the dishes clean, laundry done, and Nerf bullets corralled takes a concerted effort and often shows up on my Fitbit as cardio time. It's a losing battle.
But on the inside too.
My pastor and father-in-law pointed at his congregation yesterday and declared, "You. Are. A. Mess."
The sermon was about moving from mess to masterpiece. That we are indeed God's workmanship, but that His workmanship is an ongoing thing.
And in recognizing that I myself am a mess (which of course I already knew), I can know that everyone else is a mess too. Instead of trying to hide this from each other and polishing the outside to make it look like we have it all together, as a church we ought to be able to be honest about our mess and find support and encouragement to work on it. Because we weren't meant to do any of this alone.
It hit home in so many ways, because failure is something that haunts me, even medicated as I am. Who knows whether I should bare my soul here, but I've gained a lot of weight this year and it is getting to me. A lot. I failed to keep it off and take care of my health because, why? Food tastes good? It's my escape and my peace? All that and more.
I'm a mess, y'all. An overweight hot mess.
But I know God's not done, and that somewhere in me is the fight to be who He wants me to be. By His mercy and grace, I will eventually get to masterpiece, as we all will when He calls us home.
Til then, please excuse my mess.
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