The Beautiful Life is Messy

The beautiful life is the messy one.  It’s one you can’t plan for.  It’s one you can’t predict.  It’s one you can’t order or create a to-do list for.  It’s one you can’t control or organize.  It’s one that looks different than you envisioned.  Daily.

We live in North Carolina where snow is rare.  For the last 6 days life has been unplanned, off-schedule, and messy.  Very, very messy.  Messy in the literal and figurative.

5 people in the house together constantly means a constant mess.  Things left out, strewn everyone.  Kids hopping from one activity to another leaving their trail of fun in the process.  In and out, back and forth, snow melting in puddles on the kitchen floor, muddy tracks up the stairs, apple cores discovered in random places, piles and piles everywhere.

The snow that we received in North Carolina was expected and planned for.  But you can only plan and prepare to an extent.  The storm will do what it will do.  Snow dumped.  Depending on your perspective, it was a beauty or a complete nightmare.  The view from the bedroom window was one of peace and calm, sheer beauty.  If I were out in the elements or on the road, my view would have been fear and frustration.

Life can feel the same way at times.  Depending on where we are viewing the situation determines how we see.  We can plan and plan, try and try, but sometimes life just doesn’t look the way we intended or planned for.  In our parenting journey, this is a reality we come face to face with often.  The question is how we interact with it.

When we realized snow was coming, we planned for it.  We prepared to be in the house for a few days, and it was going to be amazing.  And it was.  Mostly.  But I was reminded on the very first afternoon how life rarely follows my directions.

I brought all the boys home early the afternoon the snow was to start.  In my mind I had all these plans and activities we could do while waiting for the snow.  Home not more than one hour and sibling bickering started.  By hour two I had separated all 3 boys into different rooms. Initially, I was frustrated.  This infringed on my plans.  They were ruining the fun I had planned for them.  This isn’t how today was supposed to look.  We should be laughing and playing.  Not fighting and crying. Not this early in the snow days at least.

I felt the Lord whispering.  Life will rarely look the way you anticipate.  Instructing their hearts is more important than creating fun memories.

Before I visited each room, I sat with the Lord for a few minutes.  I was disappointed.  My plans had changed and looked messier than I wanted.  I wanted a fun afternoon.  God gave me 4 messy hearts to tend to instead.  Over the last several years, God has little by little taken away my hard-core Type A.

Initially, I thought I could just do a quick little something like, “Boys this isn’t acceptable behavior.  Now be kind to each other.  Let’s go play.”  Behavior might have changed for the moment.  I would’ve gotten to play the games and activities I wanted.  It wouldn’t have taken much of my time.  It would’ve been easier in the moment.  But parenting has to take a long term view, even when it is so inconvenient in the process.

What I wanted to take 5 minutes ended up taking an hour.  I had private conversations with each boy, showing how his personal sin had provoked his brother to sin.  We looked up verses and prayed.  Privately.  Then we came together and discussed the whys.  Not the “you should or shouldn’t” but the why.  The who is God part of their behaviors.  God is love therefore….. God is truth therefore…..

It took a long time.  It was not convenient.  We never got to do what I had planned to do.  But it’s how God tends to deal with me.  I can get so channeled into my agenda and plans that I lose sight of the bigger picture.  Parenting is more than creating fun and lasting memories.  It’s molding a heart that is fully devoted to loving and serving God.  For my own heart, I tend to love Him more when I see the depth of my sin and feel His mercy and grace wash over me. I want the same for my kids.

So many of our days don’t look like Pinterest projects.  They look more like Pinterest fails. God takes the messy and makes something beautiful out of it.  For our snowcation, God showed me right at the beginning the time was His, not mine.  I was on His agenda, not mine. We had 6 days of a beautiful mess.