Messy Messes and Chili On My Carpet

I have been teaching my children how to cook since they were toddlers. I think it is important for kids to learn life skills such as cooking. Tonight I asked Josiah to help with dinner. He wasn't thrilled to do it, but he did. Then he proceeded to spill chili all over my kitchen and well into the living room. It was a big mess, chili was everywhere, and he felt awful about it. I don't think he could have made a bigger mess if he'd tried to do it.

I could have freaked on him about the mess. Maybe a year ago I might have. I could have gotten a rag and cleaned it up for him. Sometimes I hear the sound of my own mother's voice in my head saying, “If you want something done right you've got to do it yourself.”

I am so glad that God doesn't freak out on us when we make messes. And I am thankful that He still chooses to use us fallible pots of clay even when our messes spill out all over the place.

Sometimes life is messy. Sometimes the messes are tiny and don't require much clean-up other times they overshadow everything. Chili all over the place, even if it was most of the jar, in the grand scheme of things is just a little mess. I want to help my son learn to clean up the little messes, so that he will be capable of cleaning the bigger ones when they come along.

We like the little messes best I think. They are quick and don't require too much embarrassment on our part. But they rarely teach us anything of substance.

The older I get the more I have grown to embrace the messiness of life. Not the little stuff that quickly come and go, but those real messes that I used to dread.

I have begun to see them in a different way. I have begun to see how God uses our messes for our perfection. He takes those things in our lives that are just too big and too uncomfortable, and He says, “Come look what I can do with this mess you made.”

He does more then just cleaning up our messes. He teaches us through our messes. He grows us and brings us into a greater maturity by revealing these messes in our lives and showing us how to deal with them.