5 Important Lessons From the Messy Life

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As I look around my house, messiness catches my eye.  It lurks in corners, on counters, on shelves, under tables and beds, some right smack dab in the middle of the floor.  I try to keep a pretty tidy house, but sometimes, it can get out of hand.  I’ve learned some very important life lessons from my crazy, messy life.

My life is…

…scattered.

There are messes all around.  Piles here and there, toys in silly places, stuff just strewn all over the place.  Our lives aren’t much different.  We are here, there and everywhere whether doing something away from home or living life right here.  And while we are here most of the time, we are anything but in one place all nice and neat.

…wrinkled.

We wear wrinkled clothes sometimes.  We do own an iron, but ehhhh…we only iron when absolutely necessary.  My life is reflected in my clothes…not smooth, often giving a disheveled appearance.  While I would like love for our days to go smoothly, without a hitch, that rarely happens.  So, sometimes, we look like we maybe should have pulled out the old iron and board and given it a once over.

…sticky.

Do you know that feeling when you are sitting at table working away, and your hand finds the one spot of jelly or syrup the dishcloth missed?  Later, as you are going on about your business, you reach for the door knob only to find that someone shared sticky there, too.  Sticky rarely stays in just one spot, and so it is in my messy life.  It seems like once I find that one sticky spot, there’s little bits of sticky in other areas, too.

…gunky.

The window seals, around the faucets–you know the gunk.  As bad as I hate to admit it, it’s just nasty in some places.  In those places that people don’t see, the buildup is so much more.  I tend to keep clean and tidy the places people DO see, while neglecting the harder to see, harder to reach places.  That’s why I put it off, which is why it gets so bad.  No one wants to deal with it, so we let it go.  When the time comes that we have to clean it, it’s stuck there and painful to remove.

…cluttered.

You don’t live in a 1700 sq ft house with 8 other people and not have clutter.  We try very hard to keep clutter at bay, but sometimes it sneaks up on us.  My messy life is just like that.  I try to keep the trash and unimportant things away, but they creep back in and make me feel panicked because I can’t manage all the junk.

5 Important lessons I have learned from my crazy, messy life

I am a mess some days, just like my house.  Some days are worse than others.  But, here’s what my messy life has taught me.

1. Scattered reminds me that without purposeful picking up, I would be all over the place.
2. Wrinkles mean that we have clothes to wear, and we are living life!
3. Sticky tables and door handles means my littles enjoyed their breakfast and that we had food to eat.
4. Gunky shows me that there are deeper places I need to work on getting clean.
5. Clutter shows me that we have to continually purge to feel relief.

All that together reminds me that it’s okay if my house is not clean, and it’s okay if I am not perfect. Ralph Martson said, “We are born to be real, not perfect.”

Our lives, just like our houses, can get messy.  Even the fanciest, most well cared-for ones aren’t perfect all the time.  I believe, though, that it is in the wrinkles, the gunk, the clutter, and the sticky and scattered messes that we learn some important lessons.  We are not perfect, but we strive to be better than we were yesterday.

Mama, let’s don’t be disheartened when it is all a mess.  Instead, let’s agree to see the messes in the light of blessing–blessings we didn’t deserve and don’t appreciate.  When we see blessings, we can’t help but find joy, even in the mess.