There are days I get it all right. There too are days where I get it all wrong. Isn't it a wonderful knowledge to know that each day God's mercies are new? Not just for those who get it right most of the time, but for us, for people like me, who get it wrong a lot of the time.
Last night I finished a baby afghan I had been working on for a few months now. I chose the colors, and then I created the pattern. I had a vision of how I wanted it to turn out. Somehow over a matter of these months it all came together. Each stitch created room for another and another. There are times that it all so easily flowed together. But then all of a sudden a pup, (That would be Stanley), will jump as high as he can reaching up on the bed, pulling down the skein of yarn attached to the afghan, and thinking it's hilarious he runs through the house and the yarn ends up twisted and jerked like a big hot mess.
I then have a choice. I can sit down and work through the yarn or I can just cut it and start all over. I gotta tell ya, there are times it is much easier to just cut it off right there in the mess of it all. Sometimes I had it off to my husband and say, "I need help." In all his patience he will unravel it all for me. Just thinking about this brings me to ponder how Jesus willingly takes it all. I am learning that sometimes it's best to cut it off and start new, but there are those times it's well worth it to unravel. This is where patience comes in and gives me the death stare. Not to mention my glares at Stanley as he is sitting next to me in anticipation for me to leave my work and let him at it again.
Ah, but right there, that's what Satan does to us, right? He lays in wait. He just wants a chance to distract us, to get us all twisted up. Life was going so smoothly and then it just unraveled. We are left wondering how to put it all back together again. But in those times when the mess is heavy, God gives us the grace to say, "Enough". His grace is sufficient.
God created us for a magnificent purpose. To bring Him glory. He pours Himself, His love, into our lives each and every day. We have to willing to receive Him. See, He would love us no matter if for the our lives every day was a mess. If it were possible for Him to love me any more than He does right this minute, I would think it would be on those messy days where I try with all my might to get it right, but get it all so wrong. Grace.
I figure the more I try to control it all the more of a mess I'm going to make things. It takes courage to be real, to show people the real me. It's not always so pretty. In fact, on most days I'm a mess. But, even in my mess, it's important to remember that I am a work in progress. God will make glory even out of my greatest mess. Let us never forget. He is always bigger!!
See, being unfinished makes me have such hope. I am a work in progress. He is still stitching. Still creating. Still molding. I may unravel as life takes off running in twists and turns. But, He isn't going to leave me that way. He loves me to much to leave me in the mess. The best part of that is that He is going to stop until I reach heaven. Can you imagine the finished work in us? Lay out the red carpet. It'll be something that Hollywood has never seen. It will be glory revealed. If there were Facebook in heaven the status update would read, "Look at her! Just look at her. She's all finished. She's perfection in My image, created by love. I always knew what she would turn out like. She didn't see it, but I did. My daughter, I am so proud, My child." Okay, now that gives me goosebumps of glory. How about you?
Friends, it isn't all we do every day. It isn't how much we work or what we get accomplished. It's not our gorgeous magazine style home. Not the number of zeros on our paycheck. It has nothing to do with that designer label. Oh, don't look to other women and wish you could be like them. You don't know the mess of their story. Some of us show our messes, but most of us try to hide them. We bury them deep and try so hard to keep up with everything. If we could just work on us, without shame and condemnation, but look at ourselves grace and transparency.
You know, there are women just waiting for another to be real about the mess. It gives way for others to live a transparent life. Oh, we don't have to share all the personal details, but the life of real, at the moment, that we are living. It's worth being real. See, Jesus is in the struggle with us. He's working in our lives and that is what this world needs to see. This world needs to see that we aren't perfect. We are far from it.
Being women, wives, mothers, oh gosh, all the hats we wear, is tough. It doesn't matter if our children are young and at home or if they are grown and out of the house. Whether we work outside the home or work inside our home, let us not get caught up in comparing, but let's encourage and inspire. We do that be being honest, not being perfect. Those girls who look like that have it all together, maybe they do, maybe they are on the brink of having their work jerked off the bed and tossed into a tornado of a mess.
The more I look to Jesus the more I just wanna be me. Not a perfect me, but a me who is content and is willing to allow the Lord into my life do His thing so that the day of my last breath He will be able to say, "Well done, my good and faithful servant." I guess the bottom line is, I just wanna be His girl. So, no matter the mess, I know He when it's all twisted around my ankles He will give me what I need to face the mess, the hot mess sometimes created by others, and sometimes created by me. After all, I'd rather my tagline be, "Created by Him", rather than, "Created by me".
"For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them." Ephesians 2:10
"But now, O Lord, You are our Father; We are the clay, and You are the Potter; And all we are the work of Your hand." Isaiah 64:8
"Being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in your will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ." Philippians 1:6
