A Comfortable Mess

Lent began on Wednesday and will continue until Easter Sunday, April 12. Lent is traditionally a time when Christians reflect on their faults, repent, and seek to purify their hearts and desires. It is an opportunity to grow in holiness in preparation for the celebration of Resurrection Day on Easter Sunday. Over the next forty days, I will be sharing personal Lenten reflections from my own journey with Jesus during this sacred season. It is my prayer for you that my honesty might give you courage and let you know you are not alone. The Savior knows us by name, and He loves us.

O Lord who rules over all, how blessed are those who trust in you!

Psalm 84:12

My house is a comfortable mess. I never imagined I would write those two words together, comfortable mess, especially to describe my own living space.

It is much messier than it was before November 6, the night our lives changed when fire ravaged our home. The kind man from the restoration company told me he had never worked in a more orderly house. Whether that was true or not, it flattered my perfectionistic, control-addicted heart.

I have now unpacked more than one hundred boxes. The forks and spoons are in their drawers again, and the linens are stacked neatly in the closet just outside the orange bathroom where monkeys are painted on the walls. Orange was the boys’ favorite color when we moved here, and they were my little monkeys, so I painted them hanging from trees on the bathroom walls. I’m so grateful that sweet mural was undamaged by the flames.

Toys are back in place, restored to the arms of their relieved young owners, stuffed animals happily ensconced once again in mounds of pillows and cozy fleece blankets on the children’s beds.

At least fifty more cardboard boxes remain full, towers creating a maze in the garage where my car once fit.

Stacks and stacks of books fill the corners of the room where I now write, and African artifacts crowd the shelves, unorganized, imperfect, beautiful.

A stone hippo sits on his nose beside my coffee cup; a wooden giraffe and her baby stand regal by my keyboard.

I am not pressured by the mess, the disorganization, the unfinished putting-back-together-of-my-life. 

Death is the gate to life, and we die many kinds of deaths before passing through the final time. Someone has said that death is the only way to get from this world to another world. 

On November 6, we died to our control, our order, the privilege of having-it-all-together. We entered a new world of dependence. Dependence on God, on the people He uses to show His love when life delivers devastation. All the things we thought were so important before just aren’t anymore.

We would have earnestly declared that we depended on God before that fateful night. We did depend on Him, as much as we were able, I believe.

But it took looking death in the face to show us just how much we clung to, how much we thought we controlled our lives. Clearly, we had much more to give Him than we realized. Tragedy has a way of clarifying what is ours and what is not.

The mess in my house today is a sign of new life. Six months ago I would have let a stack of unshelved books unhinge me. A garage of boxes and un-put-away-things would have robbed my peace and driven me to lose sleep and time with my children and husband. Not to mention time sitting still, listening, before my God.

I don’t want to go back to the world before loss. I want to stay here, in my comfortable mess, cozied right up next to my Jesus, listening and walking with Him through the mess that once drove me to anxiety.

There is some inexplicable relief to not having to control All The Things. Some indescribable peace knowing He does, and He will, and I am okay. #Lent #Loss #Trust Share on X

Lent, the season of letting go, is here. It would seem that my Lenten focus was chosen for me. As life resumes its rhythms after loss, I will not return that way again, the way of control, perfectionism, and anxiety. I will stay right here in my comfortable mess, undistracted from what truly matters most in life, focused on the Only One who does.

Lord, forgive me for giving more attention to my messes than to You. Renew my focus on You today. Amen.

@audreycfrank