Beautiful Mess

I have come to learn over the last three years of living here in the South that Southern ladies love to call one another messes. On numerous occasions I have been told that I am a mess. Even more often is my daughter, Lyla called a mess.

“She is a mess!”

I quickly learned that this isn’t necessarily insult. In fact, most often it is said with great affection. While I balk at adopting the ever-present “ya’ll,” I find myself calling myself or my daughter a mess with the shake of my head and a smile on my face.

Yes, we are a mess.

One of the things I love most about Lyla is her “mess.” She is an unstoppable pink and purple tumbleweed of loud, high-pitched talking and bouncing curls. She leaves behind her a trail of laughter and glitter. Her emotions are unpredictable and untamed and always seem to bubble up at bedtime where she recently wept and wailed,

“I don’t think I’m ready to be a big sister! I still make too many bad choices!”

Bless her heart.

A beautiful mess.

The other night, and I have to write all this down or I will forget, my son Jude beckoned me to come into his room, clearly troubled by something.

He proceeded to let me know that he had traded a Pokemon card in the hallway at school even though he knew that was against the rules.

“I’m so sorry mom. Give me any consequence you want to give me. Just take them away!” He thrust a handful of his precious trading cards into my lap.

Sweet boy. So hard on himself. Beautiful mess of second grade conviction.

I met him with grace and that gave him wings. For the next while he floated around the house “preaching” the freedom he felt with telling the truth.

I thought the matter was resolved and done but a few minutes later he called me into the mess of the master bedroom. There, I found he and Lyla had cleared a space on the floor amongst the piles of random “to dos” and were sitting. Why is it that the master bedroom is always the last place to be cleaned?

“Mom, I want to pray.”

The Spirit within me told me to be silent and clear a spot of my own to sit.

There, on the debris field that is my bedroom floor, we had church.

Where two or more are gathered…

The mess becomes holy ground.

So many times, I feel like I fall short. I fall short as a parent, wife, friend, daughter, sister.

I am a mess. Bless my heart.

It is so easy for me to hide behind my mess. I’ve sought out and justified my sins, I have worn a mask of “fine.” I play “Christian” so very well. I have my lines memorized and perfectly timed.

I’ve allowed myself to become defined by my children, my husband, my parents, my grief.

I see where I have done well in the past, pat myself on the back, and brazenly step into the future fueled by a self-given Kudos with the hopes that history will repeat itself out of reflex or inheritance instead of practice.

I can numb the days away.

I can run so hard and loud that I drown out the voice that affectionately whispers to me,

“you are a mess.”

I guess where hope begins is that I know the one who is never repelled by even the messiest.

I want to be one who stops running, or numbing, or faking, to acknowledge the wreckage that surrounds me. The mess that is uniquely mine, and the mess that is collectively ours because we are in this blemished church, and this fallen world. To hold it up as a battered banner of redemptive promises.

Because it is there, on the floor of my mess that He never fails to show up. The one who navigates every piece of rubble and every pile with familiar footing. The One who sees me in my mess and meets me with gentle affection.

The one who allowed Himself to be beaten into a mess so that I don’t have to be buried in mine.

So, when I hear that click of the tongue and someone sweetly drawls, “you are a mess.” I will smile and own it.