A Beautiful Mess

Homecoming in a small town…It should be all about former graduates “COMING HOME” to catch up on the old and new times, but for reasons unknown to the general populous, Homecoming transforms into an all out war among the current students in the school. At times, the various classes, Seniors, Juniors, Sophomores, and Freshmen, are attacking each other, but at others, there is a joint effort to decorate the homes of teachers and fellow students with temporary tapestries made of toilet tissue while leaving behind a trademark year of graduation on some glassy surface in shaving cream or window paint. Recently, the high school in my hometown where I work as an English teacher held Homecoming festivities. The picture above depicts one small fraction of the greeting I received when I walked outside on Thursday morning. It was a mess. But knowing the effort that students had put into it, and the fact that a shaving cream note in the grass of the front yard read, “We Love You – 2020”, in my eyes, it was a BEAUTIFUL MESS!

Perhaps that’s the way we should view more of life’s messes. Maybe if we looked at our current condition from the proper perspective we would behold beauty rather than recognize ruin. Certainly, some occurrences in life are indeed tragic, and there’s no immediate sliver lining to witness. But when it comes to the normal every-day happenings that don’t go the way we want them to, but don’t alter the course of our lives, what if we purposely attempted to see the beauty among the mess? I dare say we would probably be surprised at the view from a new vantage point.

Junior spills his milk on the breakfast table and on himself just as you’re getting ready to rush him to the school that he’s already late for. How do we perceive this scenario? We could throw a fit and make Junior feel like the worst kid ever to strap on a pair of tennis shoes, or we could snap a milk-infused selfie, post it on Facebook, clean up, and then grab a doughnut on the way to the school that will still be there when he gets there, all the while whispering a prayer of thanks to the Lord, because “Children are a gift from the Lord…” (Psalm 127:3).  It’s a mess…but it’s a beautiful mess!

Instead of you being selected for the promotion at work that you know you wanted, thought you deserved, and were told you were well qualified for, it is given to someone else that you are convinced isn’t even in the same talent ballpark as you are. How do you respond? You could storm out with slamming doors and resignation letters resounding the main line of an old Johnny Paycheck song, “Take this job and shove it!”. OR…you could be grateful for the job you still have and say a silent “eat your heart out” when the day is done and you’re walking out the door, but the one with the responsibility of the promotion is working late to meet a deadline. It could just be a manifestation of the reality mentioned in 2 Peter 2:9 where the Apostle states, “The Lord knows how to deliver the godly…”. Sometimes the Lord blesses us by keeping us from obtaining what we thought we wanted. Is it a mess? Sure. But it’s a beautiful mess!

Without a doubt, times will come our way in which life just works out in a way that we didn’t want, didn’t expect, and didn’t even know was possible, but even in those times, there’s loveliness if we’ll just look for it. Do me a favor, and the next time you experience a mess in life, purposely attempt to find the beauty in it. You can’t deny that it’s a mess, but you can look at it from an angle that makes it a Beautiful Mess! Now around the corner or around the curve, in the wide open or beneath the trees – with or without toilet paper tapestries – in all of life’s Beautiful Messes, I’ll see you in the Great Outdoors!