I’m a Mess
The life that we endure on this earth can be considered nothing other than messy. We experience good and evil, joy and suffering. We fail and we succeed. We’re up and we’re down. As we evaluate the landscape of our messy lives, we often ask ourselves questions with a yearning to no longer feel trapped in the neverending cycle of emotional strain.
How many times have my emotions swelled and I felt pain?
How many times do I have to keep re-learning the same lessons?
How often will I disappoint those around me?
How often will they disappoint me?
The relationships we carry, the dreams that never come to fruition, the rollercoaster nature of this world continue to strike me. This life ebbs and flows like a wave, sometimes water-- sometimes fire.
When my life feels like a mess, when I’m at my worst, I begin to question myself. “Who are you to think you’re worth more than this?” “Who would ever love you in this state” “Who would ever show up for you in the middle of your mess?”
Shame spirals don’t exist in a vacuum. They come like a parasite, latching onto any moment of self-doubt we may experience. If we’re not careful, we may succumb to their intense onslaught of propaganda.
In the age of western culture’s near pornographic obsession with perfection, we miss the beauty that is available in the whispers that exist in the midst of our mess. Still, small voices can break through to reveal glorious truths about our humanity, if we let them. We miss them because we have been duped into believing we were to strive for something that was never intended.
We strive for perfection because we have moralized making mistakes. We have called slip-ups crime, we have deemed imperfections sin, and we push for everyone to be the best at all hours of the day. We internalize the “immoral” action of apparent failure instead of rejoicing in the lessons that are now in abundance before us.
The more I live, the more I see the beauty that exists within the mess. Yes, there is pain there too. Yes, there is heartache melded within, yet there is something that continues to be true regardless of season.
The beauty of love.
We are at our most authentic, genuine, true selves when we recognize and affirm that love is still allowed to be let in when we’re at our worst.
You see, love is scandalous when it flows towards somebody who doesn’t like themselves. Whether it be from another or our own being, the beauty in our human mess comes when love abounds.
Because love is a choice, we’re always able to avoid it. And so many of us avoid it every day.
We avoid it because we hate ourselves in the mess. We see a dirty mirror, or even more so we see a dirty person reflecting back. And so we shrink. Further and further down, we curl up and wonder about such a sorry excuse for a person. We feel small. We feel pain. We feel breath slipping away from us. How could we ever recover from this?
And when the distraction of achievement and accomplishment fails, when the armor of fake confidence remains continually pierced, may we cease running from a love that could speak to us and tell us that those low, small versions of ourselves that we hate, that person who has shrunk down so small, that person who is stained with the regrets of their past, it is that very person who Love is speaking to.
That is the version that is worthy.
That is the version that is lovable.
That is the version that has immeasurable value.
In the mess. Not out of it.
What’s striking about this revelation is that I need not be anything different for love to be let in. I need not strive for perfection any longer, but I may accept the messiness this life may bring, myself in the midst of it, and hear “you are loved.”
The mess of this life offers an ability to experience a love that truly can set us free. And that is a journey of freedom that begins the day we decide to open our ears and hear that love has always been speaking to us.
May the whispers always reach you, even on your messiest of days.
❤️
