Life is Messy

A few of us, and yours truly with a cluttered soul, need our visual spaces clear. We need our eyes to be free in order to see. My mess, often limits my ability to interact with others. My messiness keeps me from offering time and space, and the gift of presence to others. 

Surrounded by abundance, my soul still starves. Type A, American abundance, is more baggage than blessing, affecting my ability to love those things that really matter.

 But, type A's move their mess easily. We've moved several times in many years. Moving helps clear out the mess, just as it opens up new spaces and places. We leave some baggage behind, but not nearly enough, and we rarely leave the baggage behind that hinders our loving well in new spaces and places. The mess of our lives ever surrounds us. Dust and ashes cling to us, every move we make.

Ashes to ashes

Dust to dust

As wood heats our home, ashes accumulate. Like ashes, heartache accumulates. Some experiences never make sense. Things done, costing us and others pain, and things done to us. Our lives are fragments that will one day be made whole, but not here, not now.

This dark season, I seek to give all the fragments of my throbbing soul to a Soulmate. He's promised His yoke is light. I'm not there yet, giving it all to Him. So many days, I take back what I promised I would throw out. I keep the mess close to me. The baggage, ashes, dust, and mess are a millstone, but He's there, offering to take my burden. Because this side of His mountain, men are bent under the weight of the world. But one day we shall be whole, and bend under the weight of His glory.

Oh Jesus, so often we make a mess of our lives and we mess others up at the same time. Yet, you offer hope, yourself, amidst the mess. Help me relinquish my mess. Redeem the mess and the years the locusts have eaten. Help me embrace my mess, so I may embrace others, and embrace the Son in a dark solstice season.

Messy thoughts inspired by C. Last week, she got her hands on Marie Kondo's book, The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up. Inclined to collecting, along with her brother, they cherish messy work spaces with nuts and bolts around them. I'm thankful for her motivation to straighten her creative space. One cannot find what one needs, when one needs it, in a space, where nothing has a place!

And just for fun, here's an excerpt from a children's book I wrote this fall that's roaming the planet for a home. 

  Bless Our Mess
by Kim Conolly

All across the map, there are dangerous traps. Rooms so dirty, kids are stuck in their precious muck.

From Egypt to Mongolia, parents complain of smells they disdain.

From Papau New Guinea to Cameroon, you hear, “Clean up your room!”

From Minnesota to Marrakesh, they say, “Take care of this mess!”

From Iceland to Vietnam, it is heard, “Your closet makes me cry; my nose want to die!”

....

Wishing you a lovely Christmas. Let us, this season, embrace our messiness and give it to God. Let us live moments with others that matter, and let us give our burdens to our Messiah, the One who saves. Merry Christmas, dear ones, He is born, the hope of our world and the world yet to come.