Life Is Messy

With a 17-month old around the house, we are constantly finding things in one place that should be in another. As he has become more mobile and independent, we have to watch more closely. Inevitably, we get distracted, and only discover what he’s been up to later on in the day.

Recently, after the kids were all in bed for the night, my wife and I sat down to watch a little TV. We find that escaping into an imaginary other world for awhile helps us to better handle the chaos of our own. As I got comfortable, my eyes drifted to the corner where we keep the toys for the little guy, and I saw what appeared to be a pile of dirt. With twin 6-year-old boys in the house as well, a pile of dirt isn’t necessarily foreign to us, but the placement of this one was. It wasn’t near a door or where the older guys might track it in before taking off their shoes, so it caught my attention.

I got up and walked towards it to see what I would need to clean it, hoping that a dust-buster would be all that was required. As I approached the small pile, I saw that the particles were larger than just dirt, and were spread out all over the corner with the toys, and were also scattered on the furniture near that corner. What a mess! Then as I began to look closer, I discovered what these small particles really were.

One of our son’s other favorite past-times is to open the cereal cabinet and drag boxes out whenever he wants a snack. It was cute the first two times. Now it’s just annoying. He had apparently gotten ahold of a box of LIFE cereal, and made off with a handful before we could wrangle the box from him. He stashed them on the floor, but then lost interest, and as he played, he crushed them, and the broken pieces transferred from him to his toys and the furniture.

LIFE is messy...as it turns out. Yes, a dust-buster worked this time, but that’s not always the case. What about in our daily life, when things get scattered and spread out? Sometimes we stash items from our “to do” list, and move on to something else, forgetting about them. Maybe there’s a relationship that needs some attention, but we can’t find the time, and before we know it, it is broken into little pieces. Unfortunately, It’s only until we sit down when we discover the displaced pieces of our life and remember these things we forgot to do, or find out just how shattered a relationship is. The messes can range from inconvenient to painful.

We can’t just whip out the cosmic dust-buster to get rid of these things. We have to clean up the messes, but in real-life, it’s more like putting together a deeply intricate puzzle instead of just throwing away the pieces. Fortunately, we don’t have to try and do this clean-up alone. God is there and can energize us to find that extra fifteen to twenty minutes to take care of the last thing on our list. He is there to provide guidance and direction as we painstakingly put the pieces of a relationship back in place. It may take time, but He is faithful, and can help us when we let Him.

At one point or another for all of us, life is messy. How we handle the mess is what helps us get stronger. Eventually we’ll see that life is not served best with milk, but with the solid food of spiritual growth, and we can get to that point where we can thank God for the messes.