I love life. Sunshine slanting through the window. Old men leaning across the table at Panera to laugh and share stories over coffee. The goldendoodle ripping across the yard toward me with his tennis ball, a giant grin on his face. My son giggling uncontrollably at the pirates in an old Disney movie.
But sometimes I feel like it’s a marble kitchen island.
It’s luxurious. It’s useful. You may have spent hours deciding which pattern to install in the kitchen renovation. Maybe a vase of fresh pink tulips sits cheerfully on it.
But stacks of unopened bills, sticky dishes, a dirty hoodie and your son’s science project now cover it. You walk through into the kitchen cheerfully humming, on the hunt for coffee, take one glance at the counter and leave, cringing.
It would be more pleasant to sit in the sunroom scrolling through pleasant pictures of clean kitchens on Instagram than to think about tackling that mess.
That’s how my life looks, too. I can’t see the tulips for the clutter there, and honestly, I don’t want to deal with it.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve tried minimalism, cleaning schedules, and muttered threats about what’s going to happen the next time someone leaves their shoes on the kitchen counter again – and the mess still happens. It can’t help itself. Life by nature is beautiful, but it’s also messy.
Stuff alone doesn’t cause the messes in our lives. Hard things happen. People hurt us. We make mistakes at work. Our best friend fights through cancer. Someone rear ends us in traffic. We can’t make our kids treat us with the respect we want, or our spouse notice our needs like we wish he would.
Pain piles up like unopened mail and I can either ignore it, tense over keeping it cleaned up, or choose to see it yet look beyond it to something more.
I love reading. My favorite books tell me a.) here’s your problem and b.) here are 5 practical steps to fix it. Naturally, I write like that, too. God gave us the ability to choose how we live, what we do, and what we say. We’re responsible to choose well and make the most of this life he’s given us. But if we leave it at that and just keep trying harder on our own, we miss God’s grace.
God created us to enjoy him and to enjoy life. Sometimes I need to tackle the messes but sometimes I just need to accept that the mess exists and let it go.
Choosing gratitude has changed my life over the past few years. I’ve been dealing with the mess of toddlers, church work, and chronic sickness. So many opportunities for crying tears about the messiness. And believe me, I have.
But when I deliberately choose to see the good God gives me, even in the mess, my heart shifts. “Give yourself grace,” people often say. But I’ve started telling myself, “Receive God’s grace.” Because all the beauty in life comes straight from God’s kind grace. I don’t have to give it to myself – he’s already given it to me. I get to receive it with open hands and a simple “thank you.”
I can stop and smell the tulips, stick the dishes in the dishwasher, jot down a to-do list that includes tackling that mail pile later and pour myself that coffee and face my day without guilt or fear, but gratitude and lightness. Beauty fills the gaps in the mess of life. We get to choose what we see.
