My Mess, His Mosaic

I'm so very late to the Five Minute Friday party this week. Late. Here I am to say "Yes" to five minutes of brave writing.

This week we're celebrating the release of Kristen Welch's book Rhinestone Jesus: Saying Yes to God When Sparkly Safe Faith Is No Longer Enough. She has a crazy {amazing} belief that we can say "yes" to God even if our life isn't neat and tidy and she dares us to believe that with her.

On Monday I'll have a "Yes" in my mess post and a giveaway of a copy of the book, but for now I'm joining with Lisa-Jo and the rest of the gang for 5 minutes on "Mess"

We're about to move twice in a month. My whole week has revolved around moving boxes and I'm bone tired from it all. It's a mess. A catastrophe of life exploded between two houses.

This is a juggling act of storage units and a temporary house and a million other questions about purpose and place.  And while everyone else is doing the day to day I feel like I am struggling to get from one day to the next with my sanity intact.

I feel buried under boxes and to-dos and should-dos. The load weighs heavy but I've not shouldered it alone. There has been this community of courageous Jesus lovers that have shown up around me. They have watched the wee-girl and walked a lap or two in around the park and this spinning wheel of life just to remind me that God is here with me in my mess.

It's here in the mess that I know my need most.

I know that in no area of my life can I go it alone. 

So on a Friday morning when the Millie has woken up at the crack of dawn because of the light peaking through the windows of her new {for now} room I can cup my coffee and rest. It will all get done. The boxes will stay packed for now and we'll move again in a month.

These questions will be answered and we'll drop pebbles behind us to point to God's faithfulness. It isn't really a mess to God. It's a mosaic. A mosaic He is piecing it together in the most beautiful way.

There isn't a magic eraser big enough, but there is a God bigger than.

It's messy and it might not ever be, but we'll clear the brush from the path as we go so that we can look back and see where He led us from no matter where we're headed. 

"Farther along we'll know all about it. Farther along we'll understand why. So cheer up my brothers live in the sunshine. We'll understand this all by and by."

~Josh Garrels "Farther Along" from Love & War & The Sea In Between

The New Year Starts NOW

Sometimes I wish life had a backspace button.

A little something I could click to back my way out of a string of days that feel wasted and have left me feeling like a waste of space.

I had high hopes for the first few weeks of 2014. After a month of holidays, travel and family I was ready to put two feet on the floor and hands to the task.

Let it be noted that I am a terrible patient. I hate being sick so when the beginnings of a sore throat started I mumbled and grumbled and prayed it wasn't so. Well, it was so and now the question has become SO?

How do you get your feet under you when time just seems to have gotten away?

My husband, ever the pragmatist, noted that Lysol claims to get rid of 97% of all germs on surfaces and that is a reasonable ratio to drive sales of their products. His point being that I have just as much of a year left and that shouldn't be reason to give up on plans, goals, dreams and motivation.

I know, I know...What kind of crazy person gives up a week in because of a cold?

{Raises hand. Hangs head in shame}

It was a really bad and horribly unproductive week. It left me feeling like an insignificant, incapable speck and that no good voice in my head was blaring as loud as ever.

For all my blabbing about grace it is in the muck that I still find how little grace I have with myself. 

I am far too quick to judge myself against a litany of to dos rather than extend grace to myself and the truth that God already has.  

My One Word for 2014 is "Embrace" so here I am to embrace that the first week of the year could use a do over, but in light of that physical impossibility and my lack of a time machine I'll settle for leaning into the grace that God goes before us in all things. He already new the first week would be a bust. Now I've got to lean hard on Him so that the other 51 weeks won't be.

Because that is really the issue, isn't it? I couldn't control what happened that first week, but God was never not in control. While I was berating myself for failures and having two left feet as I dance through life God was telling me that in Him all things are possible.

I'm sure some of you are wishing for a do over for the first bit of 2014. My husband offered me a restart on the year and I'm taking him up on it. A new chance at the new year is just what I need. I bet some of you are needing the same.

Permission granted.