mess and majesty

Life moves fast, whether or not we are standing still to watch it go by. We grow up. We change. We become new people without even realizing it most of the time. We think that we have been stationary, stagnant within our day to day living. And often it feels this way. We are waiting for the moment that our life will begin when really we are already within it, living. We are different than before, but not quite where we thought we would be. So we look around at each other, at ourselves, and think about whom it is we were made to be.

We all have roles in life. Mother, daughter, sister, friend—different roles for different purposes. Our relationships reflect this. To some we are the one with all the answers, and to others the one with all the questions. And this is how it should be. We are all learning from one another, building a community that holds diverse gifts and talents for a purpose. We were not made to be alone, and as much as I don’t like to admit it, we need one another.

I am independent in every sense of the word. I like to be self-sufficient. Life is much easier this way, with no worries and no one to be accountable to. It’s also incredibly isolating and lonely. My days become grey and colorless when I push people away. Less prone to miracle-making. I have found that when I open up my heart and loosen the grip I hold on my time, God fills the space with extraordinary things. When I am not busy trying to find life elsewhere or rushing to get to point B, it gives me time to see what is happening in plan A. To enjoy the process and focus on what is being made instead of what I want to be made already.

Don’t get me wrong, I believe boundaries are important. We need them so that we do not become enmeshed, inappropriately responsible for the emotions of others. When we start to blur the lines between our souls and the souls of those important to us, it gets messy. I have always been afraid of this over-connection, this accountability for the emotional well-being of others. It’s both suffocating and terrifying to believe that you and you alone can make or break another’s spirit. What power we have has individuals, what pain we can inflict. Our capacity for good seems overwhelmed at times by the reality of our evil. So we start to believe that we cannot touch anything without it turning to stone.

But our capacity for darkness does not outweigh our ability to create light. It’s quite the opposite. Our darkness allows our light to shine all the brighter, illuminating the fact that there is someone working out beauty from our brokenness. I don’t like perfect people. They annoy me. People who seem to have it all together, who are bright and shiny and think that the world is basically good. It’s not. And no amount of ignoring the ugly will make it go away.

I am learning to engage myself and those around me as we are. In the middle of our mess, in the middle of our majesty. It’s so easy to want to fix. To push and pull until we get the outcome we are looking for. We want ourselves to be as we imagined ourselves to be, and others the same. But we are where we are, and there is purpose in it. We are being created even now, in the midst of our chaos, in the midst of our darkness, in the midst of our mistakes.  And our mistakes do not make us mistake-makers. They make us humans, capable of messing up in a thousand different ways. But I say that the most beautiful people I know, the ones that I believe in the most in this world, are the ones who are riddled with scars and full of grace. The ones that don’t get it right the first or second time, but know how to fail well and move forward. The ones who know they have flaws but allow grace to do what it was meant to do—make saints out of sinners. Because the truth is we are all imperfect, some of us just hide it better than others.

Don’t be afraid to be a container. Our capacity for love will always make us more vulnerable to pain and fear and responsibility. That’s  OK.  We are healers as much as we are hurters. It is inevitable that you will cause another pain. But you also have the chance to be a part of a miracle.

Stand still.

Look around.

Let your mess be your majesty.