Beautiful Mess

I’m spending each day here in the month of October writing about finding beauty in the everyday mess.  Before you think I’m an expert on this topic, let me confess: I’ve likely already lost my temper, prayed that I could have a solo vacation, and held back frustrated tears this morning.  I’m far from having this mastered.  I’m writing here transparently so that you and I might grow in seeking His daily extravagant beauty.  So pull up a chair and get ready to dive into the mess with me, knowing that somewhere in this mess is a beauty that only God can craft.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

(Excuse me while I recuperate from Allume.  I am changed… and finding words to express that is harder than it seems… this was written during worship on the 26th… I’m not sure it grasps at the totality of the change… but it’s a start.)

I just want to cup the messy beautiful in my palms.

I want to cradle the joy and the sorrow with the images and words I was placed here to create.

I thought that looked like something specific.

I am not specific.  On any given day my hands hold little hands, stroke my husband’s hair, grasp needle and thread, tangle themselves in yarn, click a shutter or a mouse, grasp a pen, and even hold a spoon at the stove.

I thought I would hunt this beauty entwined with this mess with a lens and a pen.

But I am not that specific.

And these words spoken over me this weekend are speaking strange things to my heart.

Freedom
Exposure
Speaker
Hospitality
Joy
Collaboration
Humanitarian Photojournalism
Hard Stories

These words are specific and varied.

Quietly loud.

11 months ago I wrote on my God Sized Dream Team Application that the dream I had was to capture beauty behind a lens.  Specifically: 12 paid sessions for my business. Just writing this down and I was catapulted into this wild dream journey.  I have done 13 paid sessions since I submitted that application.

God has exceeded that written dream. However, the real work has been as He fiddles with the focus of that God-sized Dream to be more about capturing the beauty in so many different ways in the real life messes. And here I am at Allume finding that the dream is far bigger than 12 paid sessions.  I’ve found my core calling of seeking the beautiful right in the middle of the messy.

The dream for more of what God has for me is different.  It’s bigger. It’s growing everyday.

It continues to grow to a size that only God can complete.  And if I will but hold my hand loosely around that dream, He will work out the details and create art through my open hands.

I am messy. I am broken.  I am a recovering people pleaser.  I grow weary. I am filled with sin.

But I am art.

You are art.

You and I are created for a purpose and with a specific core calling that we will complete in 10,000 different ways.  We will co-create with Him in this one messy beautiful life, by His grace.

I’m spending each day here in the month of October writing about finding beauty in the everyday mess.  Before you think I’m an expert on this topic, let me confess: I’ve likely already lost my temper, prayed that I could have a solo vacation, and held back frustrated tears this morning.  I’m far from having this mastered.  I’m writing here transparently so that you and I might grow in seeking His daily extravagant beauty.  So pull up a chair and get ready to dive into the mess with me, knowing that somewhere in this mess is a beauty that only God can craft.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

We’re in the elevator. It feels like it’s time to run. Time to go home and quit pretending that we write. Quit pretending that we belong.

And then she walks onto the elevator. She’s wearing bright red boots. I hear the same hysteria in her voice that I feel threatening to overwhelm me.

She doesn’t feel like she belongs.

The author of a New York Times Bestseller doesn’t feel like she fits in a room full of other writers.

But she is preaching herself the gospel in an anxious voice in an elevator.

“How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news. How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!”

I glance again at her feet. Those red boots… that personal symbol for herself that she is called to bring good news. She is wearing the gospel to remind herself Whose she is and what she has been called to do.

The elevator reaches the bottom floor. The one with the people all talking and some who have already rejected us.

The red boots exit the elevator. She has no idea that she may have just given two girls the best good news of the day.

How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news.

I’m spending each day here in the month of October writing about finding beauty in the everyday mess.  Before you think I’m an expert on this topic, let me confess: I’ve likely already lost my temper, prayed that I could have a solo vacation, and held back frustrated tears this morning.  I’m far from having this mastered.  I’m writing here transparently so that you and I might grow in seeking His daily extravagant beauty.  So pull up a chair and get ready to dive into the mess with me, knowing that somewhere in this mess is a beauty that only God can craft.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

She oscillates nervously on the edge of the pool.

She’d handed her husband the baby and announced she was going to jump. Her kids and mine are all shouting encouragement. There’s a sort of hopeful anticipation by the 6 and under crowd all floating in the deep end in their life jackets.

She laughs, throws her whole body in the air, and come splashing into the pool. We all laugh and cheer as she surfaces.

The swim to the ladder is victorious. I see “I did it!” well up in a my friend’s joyful laugh.

Together we catapult into the deep end again spraying all the kids with cannon ball fallout.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

Today this friend and I, we’re jumping into a different pool. We’ve secured an afternoon babysitter for 7 under six years old and are riding together to Allume– a Christian blogging conference right in our hometown. We’ll be two introverts  walking into a whirlwind weekend filled with people and information overload. It’s going to be wild.

Neither of us are quite sure why we’ve been called to Allume. But here’s the thing I know –> that victorious joy I saw in her face when she jumped is the same joy we’ll have knowing we obeyed His call for us.

Obedient faith is what Jesus calls us to do. James MacDonald says that

Faith is hearing the Word of God and acting on, regardless of how we feel, knowing that He promises a good result.

When we live in this faith, there’s a guarantee of lots of messes: things will fall, we will break, sin will creep in.  But when we live in obedient faith, there is no regret, no condemnation, and erased shame as we watch Jesus make something beautiful from our messes.

So we’re diving in obedience and trusting Him with the results.

I’m spending each day here in the month of October writing about finding beauty in the everyday mess.  Before you think I’m an expert on this topic, let me confess: I’ve likely already lost my temper, prayed that I could have a solo vacation, and held back frustrated tears this morning.  I’m far from having this mastered.  I’m writing here transparently so that you and I might grow in seeking His daily extravagant beauty.  So pull up a chair and get ready to dive into the mess with me, knowing that somewhere in this mess is a beauty that only God can craft.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

Yesterday, I talked about how I can’t do anything right.

Let me be honest: the sin that so entangles my heart doesn’t want me to admit that I have weaknesses. But through this series and through a stack of books that God has dropped in my lap I’ve come to rejoice that His “power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9).  My weakness.

So let me be frank: I don’t always do the best job of applying the gospel to every moment.  In fact, most of last week had me pulling at my hair and yelling at the heavens to send money so that I could drop all three kiddos off at daycare and do nothing all day long.  The sin level in my house is currently best described as epic.  Add in my own sin in response to their sin and you could very easily label the sin level as colossal.

So as I start to talk about letting the gospel transform beauty from the sinful mess in our homes, let me confess that I’m mostly talking to myself. I’m mostly rehearsing again what the Lord is hammering into me through the sin in my house and my own heart.

So how does the gospel change me and my response to sin?

When I recognize that I am a loved and adopted child of God no matter what daily sins I struggle with, then I am free to respond to His love.  It is the love of God that we do not deserve that changes us. 

My little Bronwyn is in a why stage.  I ask her to do something and, without fail, her hands fall into place on her hips and she cocks her head to the side and says “Why?” Fortunately, most of the time she’s just being inquisitive and so I give her a long scientific answer and she nods before completing the task.  But when the task is distasteful or regular, I hear her “Why?” tone become sassy. If I respond quietly and firmly, “Because I love you and I believe learning to do this well is the best thing for you.” She’ll look at me quizzically, maybe huff or squeeze a big hug around my neck, and then, more often than not, she’ll go complete the task without incident.

The love and the grace given to us in the gospel that Christ died for us empowers us to face the mess. If I truly rest in my identity as a beloved daughter of the Great High King, then I know that every single thing I encounter is the best thing for me.  Every problem or challenge or sinful heart in my home comes straight from His hand as a good gift to grow me to be more like Him.

The promises found in His word regarding how He loves us are what spur us on to serve him: both with good works and with public repentance of our failures.

How does this look practically in the day to day?

I struggle with that hourly (sometimes minute-ly….).

It means looking that preschooler in the eye and recognizing in the midst of her tantrum that she is a gift and that this moment with her is a gift.  And if I swallow my “we should be leaving on time” pride and instead say “She’s only here for a season and she needs to know who Love is… by His grace I can be the vehicle for that lesson.”

It means saying “I’m sorry.  Will you forgive me?” All. The. Time.  And adding no qualifiers (“….But if you hadn’t…. then I wouldn’t have….”).

It means that when I want to run, that I instead fall on my knees and pray “You made me for a reason, God.  And you placed me here for this season. Enable me to be used by me.”

But most of all it means resting in our identity as a loved and adopted child of the King.  Because when we know whose we are, we can face things through His enabling grace.

I’m spending each day here in the month of October writing about finding beauty in the everyday mess.  Before you think I’m an expert on this topic, let me confess: I’ve likely already lost my temper, prayed that I could have a solo vacation, and held back frustrated tears this morning.  I’m far from having this mastered.  I’m writing here transparently so that you and I might grow in seeking His daily extravagant beauty.  So pull up a chair and get ready to dive into the mess with me, knowing that somewhere in this mess is a beauty that only God can craft.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________

I don’t know about you, but I live in a house full of wretched sinners: the chief of whom is me.

Every day is filled with whining, explosive rage, sighs of defeat, and someone crawling into a closet or bathroom just to get away from it all.  Again… those might all be my problems. Ahem.

But here is how the gospel informs me about living right in the middle of a mess of sinners.

See, first of all, not one of us is capable of real change on our own. Sure, I can pridefully over plan our day so that I and them will have what seems like no place for sin to appear.  And then Bronwyn will unexpected shove some other kids tricycle handle a the park right into Aeralind’s mouth.  Blood will erupt everywhere, a triumphant smile will arise in the now proud user of the tricycle and I will have to begrudgingly clean up blood and deal with the beautiful mess of these two little hearts.  Oh, and did I mention that I can’t even see Sedryn during this whole event; I can hear him cry “Pane! (Plane)” every once in awhile and the playground is gated so at least he’s somewhat safe.  Until, of course, he throws a fit and has to be carried to the car flailing when it’s time to leave for his much needed nap.

I nor my children can earn our way to heaven with our “goodness.”  We obviously can’t even handle a simple park excursion well enough to call it good. I think that may discourage some of my readers, but I’m going to say it again: we can’t earn our way to God or heaven by doing more good things than bad thing and this is the best news of the gospel. You can’t earn your way into God’s favor and that is the best news you will ever hear.

Think about it: why are Muslim youth so tempted by the suicide missions of extremist groups?  Because they feel like they have to do enough good things to get to heaven. Why do primitive tribes still practice child sacrifice? Because they feel like they have to do enough good things to please a god who is angry at their failure to do right.  Why do so many ‘Christian’ Americans put on a mask that shows the rest of the world that they are doing all the right things and never show their own failures?  Because they feel like they have to do enough good things to get God’s approval.

When I am responsible for doing enough good to merit God’s approval, then I am hopeless.  When God in Jesus Christ was responsible for doing all the good I can’t do because He loved me first, then I have eternal hope.  That eternal hope and endless love is what changes a man through the Holy Spirit working in him.  It’s the only way a man can change.

So how does this truth change us in our daily lives? Let me hear your thoughts in the comments and I’ll toss in my thoughts tomorrow.