Mess.

Here's a little insight to my [Jenna's] past month or so.

I am now 30.  And with that has come an ever-increasing desire to live well.  In the physical realm, this looks like integrating main ideas of healthy eating into our grocery shopping and diet.  Like starting to run (read: jog/power walk/wheeze) in the mornings before work.  Like gradually exchanging chemical products in our home for natural solutions.  Like learning cleaning techniques our mothers and grandmothers knew like the backs of their hands, but for some reason didn't quite bridge the generation gap.  Like trying to get a handle on a schedule of keeping our apartment less of a wreck despite our crazy days.

This is a great image to illustrate my recent cleaning efforts, and also how I look and feel never.

The more I am trying to do these things, the more I am foiled in my efforts.  Shocking, right?

Specifically, I'm looking at you, cleanliness.  In the past couple of weeks, we have:

• knocked an entire container of bright yellow mustard barbecue sauce onto the carpet
• kicked a full glass of red wine over onto the carpet (beside the mustard stain)
• gotten home to discover a gallon of milk leaked into the backseat of my car (a mere week after DIY-shampooing the seats, because Pinterest! and cleanliness!)
• discovered the health benefits of turmeric and its part in creating delicious Indian-style food like lamb sloppy joes... as well as its apparent dying properties of counters, clothes, and anything ever
• had coconut oil-laden bulletproof coffee (healthy! let's do it!) leak into the depths of our Magic Bullet and all over the counter (incidentally, when you google 'hot liquid in M.B.,' disregard the half of people who say they've been doing it for years and heed the other half who say the pressure will make it shoot through the blade)
• discovered my old sneakers are now tracking black footprints everywhere, notably on freshly mopped floors
• and probably at least 29 other things.

 Thank you, universe.  Thank you, klutziness.  Thank you, thank you, irony.  (This would be my current version of that Alanis Morisette song.  Which, really, I could just say 'that Alanis song.'  Because who else is named that?!  I digress.)

And it INFURIATES ME.  To NO END.

 
It feels like such a waste of time.  I could be doing Big Things and Important Things and instead I am locked into a distasteful thing I hate for the next 25 minutes as I blot, scrub, press, shake. 

In a fit of rage and drama normalcy, I finally cried out, "I am DONE.  Get rid of it.  All of it.  Hire a dumpster.  Have a yard sale.  I don't care.  I am done owning things if all I am going to do is spend my time trying to fix them.  I don't want to own anything anymore."

Chris basically did a bell-kick in the air and gleefully asked when we can buy the RV and hit the road.

This would be fun for .4 days for me. 
Chris would be happy as a pup with two tails for life.

We have not sold all the things yet.  But truly, I have struggled.  I am attempting to become more responsible and care for what God has given us.  And it just feels like it keeps blowing up in my face.  I have not understood it.  And my frustration has grown.

And now, finally tonight, God has spoken.

I was at a prayer gathering - part of IF : Pray - and women were offering up sweet, honest prayers of hope, confession, desperation, life.  And one woman uttered, "I need You every moment, Lord.  Your mercies are new every morning because I need them."

And I heard: "This is why."

Clarity.  Undone. 

"Abide.  Need me.  Come to me."

Do I need God to get a stain out of a rug?  Well, working in my own strength sure isn't working out great, for me or for Chris.  Some of the messes have been cleaned up (praise the Lord - the spoiled-milk-dead-animal-soul-sucking-dementor smell in the car lingered for a good week, and I was getting ready to hitchhike to work); others stubbornly remain and I'm still fighting them.  I sourly, bitterly, selfishly fight.  Maybe the stain lifts, maybe it doesn't, but my mood is terrible and Chris wants to be nowhere near me.  I am anything but lovely.

Each new spill and drop and waste is an opportunity to lean on God.  Each is a tiny picture of the Mess I create in my life when I try to do it apart from Him.  That as I try to wrestle for control of my days, the Mess just gets bigger.  That as I push and scrub harder and harder through my gritted teeth, I grind the stains of my life in deeper and deeper and solidify the evidence of my mistakes and my foolishness.  But oh, how I try.

"I know You are there, catching, carrying this beautiful mess." - Sixpence NTR

So.  Deep breath.

When the next thing spills, I will pause and breathe and thank God for his presence and his reminder that I. need. Him.  I need him every hour.  Every moment.  Every second.  That trying to do life without him is futile and just messier and messier.  I was a Mess before he got a hold of me, and I revert to Mess each time I act in my own strength and not his.

I need You, God.  Thanks for putting me - literally - on my hands and knees.  This was an unusual lesson for me.  But I got it, eventually.  I need You.

"I need Thee, oh I need Thee, every hour I need Thee."