Beyond the Mess
- Lauren Shaw, PhD
- Aug 10, 2015
- 3 min read
Two weeks ago today, my family spent our first night in our new home. A home that was still very much under construction, as evidenced by the lack of kitchen countertops or sink and the tools scattered around. A home that is currently filled with boxes, chaos, and mess. Oh, the mess. Then, five days later, we left for vacation (scheduled long before our moving date) and had a wonderful week away. We spent hours at the pool, we played, we walked, we laughed. It was great. Then we went back to the new house, where we added vacation mess to moving mess, with piles of dirty laundry, wet bathing suits, and unpacked bags. Oh, the mess. Did I mention I have three young children? Serious, serious mess.
For awhile, the mess was all that I could see. I was totally and completely overwhelmed by the mess and chaos around me. All I could see of our new home was piles of laundry and boxes, unfinished projects, and floors that needed to be washed.
And then my husband put up a light fixture and it changed everything for me. I had picked out this beautiful light to hang above our kitchen sink, which is now installed, along with our countertops. I flipped the switch, turned on the light, and suddenly I could see beyond the mess.
I could see my kids playing outside in their new yard, and I could imagine preparing meals in my kitchen and serving them to family and friends. I could imagine family movie nights, games of speed Scrabble and Settlers of Catan, long conversations, and baking cookies. The mess was still there, the floor and piles of laundry as dirty as ever. The boxes were still piled high and many projects still unfinished. But I was able to see beyond the mess into the beauty and hope that is our new home, a home our family will grow and delight in.
It is really, really hard for me to see beyond the mess. I want to be someone who sees the dirty dishes as evidence of food to eat and loved ones to feed. To see the laundry and be grateful for healthy children who wear the clothes, play with enthusiasm, and end the day with grass stains and spaghetti sauce on their clothes. I want to see the toys and shoes and clutter as artifacts of a happy, buzzing family. And I want to see the work of cleaning as a sacred liturgy of love.
I do not often hit that note. But I want to try.
Even more so, I want to be someone who sees beyond the mess of people and relationships. Because even more than a house in boxes, even more than construction, even more than toddlers, people and relationships are messy. We are all broken, and limited. We are all unfinished, with parts of ourselves that still need a lot of work. We all make mistakes, and any relationship that has any depth has conflict. It can be so overwhelming when all we see is the mess. It can be so tempting to give up, to walk away, say that it is too hard and takes too much work and energy. We can feel deeply tempted to give up on people, on relationships, on ourselves.
And that’s when we need a magic light fixture. We need to step back and change our perspective, to see beyond the mess. We need to take a deep breath and think about the way we are viewing our world. And even when it is so very hard, we need to choose to see beyond the mess. To see the beauty in the imperfections, the richness that working through conflict and difficulty can yield, the character that comes through trials. To choose to see the mess in relationships as evidence that we are doing the hard work, and to hold to the hope that beauty will grow from all that work. To remember that we are all messy sometimes, and that can be okay. To breathe deep and choose the lens through which we will see those around us.
It’s not easy. Moving into a home we are renovating is giving me so many opportunities to practice seeing beyond the mess. Truthfully, parenting and marriage and work and relationships and life are giving me so many opportunities. I want to see them as opportunities and choose to turn on the light.
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