On Sunday morning, my house was A MESS. I have been working alot the past few weeks and while everyone tries to help and get chores done (sort of) it still gets out of hand pretty quickly with 6 people and a dog under one roof. My dryer has not been working as it should. This was no suprise to me. My laundry facilities never have worked well. It can take me hours to wash and dry a load. It's painful. So I had MOUNTAINS of laundry everywhere. Now I am not really picky about my house, but when it gets to that state I start getting anxious and the little voice in me compares myself to what I think I know about other people. It can get really ugly in my head.
Now add to this that it is Sunday morning. I mentioned to my sweet husband that it is taking the dryer hours to dry anything so he seizes that moment to climb into the attic look down the vents. They are nasty. So I am called upon to bring the vacuum up the ladder to the attic so it can be vacuumed out and also receive the vents he has pulled apart to bring down the ladder and bang out the lint that has accumulated over who knows how long. Bring them back up the ladder, bring down the vacuum, hold the flashlight so he can put the vents back together, troubleshoot why aren't they fitting the way they did before they were pulled apart, hold the ladder so he can climb back down. (Phew!) Soon it is 10 and church starts at 10:30 and after all this I really need church. :) So I scramble into the shower, fuss at the kids to get their shoes on, ask for the millionth time "Are you really going to wear that?" , walk out the door with wet hair and part of the make up on to put on in the car.
So we get in the car and it becomes this moment for some reason to discuss the bedroom of the oldest and youngest son and some of the nasty things I have discovered in the corners and drawers. Let the lecture begin! While my husband is giving his wisdom I turn on the radio and the first words that come out are "beautiful the mess we are...." Wow. And whether everyone intended to be or not, our car becomes silent. And all I thought, thank you Lord. I never thought about it like that.
You see, our family is chaos. I have felt like we have been kind of a joke because we are typically late, mismatched, clothes on backward, hair all over the place, loud, tore up house and car, full of drama. This really bothered me in the past. I hated to be thought of as "screw ups." (My words not anyone elses). If you think I am insecure when I compare myself with others, you should see how quickly the flame gets fanned when I start comparing my family to others. It's like I set them on a scale to compare and contrast and my family always came up short.
This is one of the reasons this move has really helped our family. When you don't know anyone, you can't compare yourself and when no one knows you, you can't care what they think. God has been helping me weed this out of me now in this season so that as we do develop those relationships here, I can be confident in my family and what God made us to be...a beautiful mess. Ecclesiates 3:11 says "He has made everything beautiful in his time." (Emphasis mine) And sometimes He doesn't have to make it beautiful, He just opens our eyes to it's beauty at the right time.
You see, we are still late, our house is tore up, we are loud, there is always drama, we screw up, sometimes in big ways. There have been nights where my prayer before dinner has been "Jesus, tonight really sucks. We really need your help. We need You." We are never going to be perfect. The best I can hope for is that we are real. But Jesus is perfect and He can redeem any situation, any conflict, any drama. He can help us pray, cry and laugh our ways through it. Our "mess" has brought us closer to each other and closer to Him. And that is a beautiful place to be.
In Christ, my Redeemer,
joy
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