I’ve spent this morning deep cleaning both of my boys bedrooms. They usually clean them up, but their definition of clean and my definition of clean are two different things. Smashed cookies in Ziploc bags, random socks hanging out in the closet floor, lots of broken pencils, and clothes stuffed in whatever drawer they will fit. Did I mention the dust? Oh my word! I literally filled up two garbage bags of trash, y’all.
As I was cleaning their rooms, I was frustrated and wondering why they don’t just do things right the first time. Why do they want to halfway put their clothes away and leave things unkempt and call it clean? Now, their rooms had been “cleaned” a couple of days before, so I should have expected to go in and find very little for me to do.
Wrong.
I believe we have become a society that is very good at hiding our mess from everyone haven’t we? We let everyone see the successes, the highlights, the smiles…the clean stuff. We have this disillusionment that because we are a child of God that we won’t have bad days, we won’t experience pain and we won’t always be smiling. We call ourselves clean and tidy, when really we are an absolute mess. We have a version of clean that we present to everyone around us, just like my kids version of clean with their rooms.
Over the last couple of weeks I have been doing a Bible Study from Lysa Terkeurst, “It’s Not Supposed to be This Way”. When God laid it on my heart, I kinda did an eye roll, honestly. I read the book years ago and felt like it really wasn’t gonna give me anything new or fresh, but knew God spotlighted it on bookshelf for that purpose. Maybe there was another woman that would sit in the study that would need it, so I was going to facilitate and try to glean something new.
God knew I would need it before the second week was over.
See, I sometimes feel like I overshare my life and I always want to be a light…but the last few weeks I haven’t been very positive. My version of clean looks like a smiles, suppressed emotions and chaos excuses by jokes. There have been several things that have happened to me or around me that have left me heartbroken. Unanswered prayers that have me wondering why God isn’t moving. I feel like crying a lot, but I don’t.
It’s messy to cry.
So, I turn my heart toward Him. I clean up bedrooms and sing praises to God. I’ve spent a lot of time meditating on Him and His Word because I know He is the only one that can clean the mess around me. I can scrub all day long, but I can’t clean up my messes as good as God can. I’m learning to show myself grace and let God clean up things in His time…just like I gave grace to my kids by cleaning those rooms and putting everything in order.
While I was busy cleaning their rooms, I had my phone on silent and put away so I wouldn’t be distracted with it. When I got finished, I had a random text message from my youngest son. The funny thing is, I can’t remember the last time he has texted me like this, but it simply said, “Hey mama. I love you.”
He loves me…and he doesn’t even know I’ve cleaned up his mess. He is going to come home and KNOW I love him, when he sees that nice, clean room instead of me fussing about what I found, I am just going to let them see my handiwork. I needed that text message more than he probably even realized and it was just a subtle reminder that God wants to know that you love Him. When you trust Him to clean up your messes, it shows just how much you love Him…and when He cleans up those messes, YOU KNOW just how much He loves you.
As hard as it is right now, I’m just going to trust Him, love Him and wait to see His handiwork.
