Bleach and Pine-sol

Growing up, cleaning was a daily part of my routine. Being raised in a Hispanic family meant to have things clean at all times. I can remember the times when I would rush to finish a certain chore that I was set to do just minutes before my parents were pulling up the driveway. The smell of bleach and pine-sol still brings me back to Saturday mornings where music would start playing no later than 8am for a weekly family house cleaning party. Definitely not my kind of party, nonetheless one that I had no choice but attending. Now as an adult I find myself cleaning more than ever. It feels like a never ending cycle of cleaning up messes. Funny enough, I enjoy the satisfaction of looking at something that was once messy but now clean. There’s something about having control over the appearance of a room, a countertop, or even a floor. No one would ever know the kind of mess that was there because once it’s clean, it’s gone. Sitting in a mess is difficult for me. Messes make me anxious and at times even make me feel incapable. Growing up, I always understood that messes were a reflection of how you lived, where your priorities were, and how much you valued the place you called home. Now the older I get the more I realize that maybe it’s just not that simple.

Although the sound of washing dishes or doing a load of laundry may be simple, it’s the messes of our lives that are a lot more complex. The idea that messes are a reflection of the choices we have made and continue to make overtime feels daunting. That idea places vast amounts of pressure on everyday life. Eventually we are left to accept the fact that life will have its messes no matter what. In the process of living and learning we find out that everything doesn’t always turn out the way we expect it or want it to be; the messiness of life touches us all, one way or another. Embracing the mess is what I personally struggle with. I have moments where I ask myself “How am I still here?” and “How come I haven’t moved on from this?”. It’s almost as if one moment I am celebrating that a particular mess is all cleaned up and the next I am staring at a huge pile of trauma, fear, disappointments, insecurity, and doubt taking up the space that was once clean, and brings me back to feeling incapable. 

It makes me think of a verse from the Bible “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know the testing of your faith produces steadfastness” (James 1:2-3). This verse makes me chuckle a bit because I feel like James was writing to me specifically when he said to count it all joy. Here’s why, I am the kind of person that can have enough self awareness and perspective to understand that challenges in life are necessary for growth. I can sit down and list the messes of my life that have produced greater faith, patience and trust in God. However, if I’m honest there are a few messes that I reject to see have any benefit in my life. Some of them are too dark, too rotten, and too hopeless to ever believe it could serve a purpose in my life. Sometimes I think about the lives of loved ones and ask myself “What good can ever come out of that?”. I also think about the day and age we live in and all the messes we face as a human race and wonder if there’s really anything worth counting as joy. But James clearly says that we should count it all as joy. Not just the messes we understand or could make sense of after a few years but even the ones we will never understand until the day we go back to our sweet everlasting home in heaven. 

I am still learning to embrace the messes in my life. Not just the ones that I’d like to cherry pick to give me growth, but the ones that I wish would just go away. The messes in my life and in this world continue to teach me that being incapable is sometimes exactly where I am supposed to be. There is only one who is ever so capable, and that is Jesus. He doesn’t look at the messes of my life and call me dirty, He sits with me in the middle of my mess and tells me I’m whole, I’m clean, and I’m righteous. He convicts me of the things I can change and He leads me to surrender all the things that I can’t change. I hope that as you read this you find peace in whatever mess you find yourself in. Instead of trying to pick up all the messes in your life, I pray that you would choose to sit at the feet of Jesus, because it is better to have your gaze on Him than to focus on the messes that surround you. That’s not to say we should pretend these messes don’t exist, but rather that our focus is on the One who could take that mess and make it a masterpiece. It doesn’t take away the pain, the anxiety, the frustrations, and hurt, but it does lead us to hope that it won’t last forever. After all, Jesus doesn’t promise to clean our messes, but he does promise to be in the middle of it with us.