Thursday, October 1, 2015

How Do We Get Out of the Mess We've Made?


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All these years later, I still remember the confusion, the fear.  I had no idea what to do or where to start.  It was too much!  I was overwhelmed and it was all my fault.  What happened, you ask?  When was this, you ask?  Well, let me tell you, I was five years old and had been told to clean my room…  You’re laughing, aren’t you?  It does seem funny, even to me.  Until I remember how it felt.  How was I supposed to clean up the mess I had made?  Have you ever been there?  Has the mess ever been so overwhelming that you were defeated before you even started?  How could you ask for help, when it was so private, so shameful that you couldn’t even admit you had made it?  How many of us are thinking of that secret, so embarrassing that no one knows of or suspects?  What do you do when your world up ends and you are left surrounded by that secret, and all its exposure has destroyed?

Your mess might actually be an easy fix.  All you may need is the skills to organize or the cleaning supplies.  It might be as devastating as the earthquake and following tidal wave that hit Japan in 2014.  And the organization and clean up takes years, even decades.  The size really doesn’t matter.  It’s what we do with this mess.  You could be the person everyone else takes their messes to.  You could even be the ‘mess whisperer’.  But all of your skills, your comping mechanisms, and giftings could be useless when facing your own mess.  Seems hopeless, doesn’t it?  And it is.  When we only look at it with human eyes.  Human eyes, you ask?  What other eyes should we use?  What other eyes do we have?  Hindsight?  Foresight?  Intuition?  Experience?  All are possible and all can be great tools, even when cleaning up messes.  But the eyes that I am writing of are not our own eyes.  They are the Eyes of the Holy Spirit.  The Eyes of God.  The Eyes that saw our mess from the beginning.  They Eyes that see the middle, end, and eventual results of our mess.  The Eyes that see our intentions, our hopes, our secret sins, our addictions, along with everything else that went into making our mess.  He is the only One who can make beauty out of it.  He is the only One who can restore the loss and makes what seems impossible happen anyway. 

So where do we go from here?  You’re sitting, surrounded by all the destruction around you.  Helpless.  Hopeless.  Terrified.  Your secret is minutes from being exposed and there is nothing you can do.  Don’t shove everything into the closet or corner.  Trust me the mess only gets bigger.  If you don’t believe me, just watch one of those horders shows.  It gets bigger, messier, and more destructive. Thanks, Lara, you’re thinking.  Describe my life, down to the second, and leave me hanging.  That’s human thinking.  You may feel or have felt deserted by God.  That’s human feeling.  He has never and will never desert you.  What do you do?  What did I do when overwhelmed by the contents of my toy box all over my bedroom floor?  I cried out.  I asked for help.  Cry out.  Ask for help.  Look up.  He’s just waiting for you to ask for help.  Ask forgiveness, He never says no to that.  Read the manual, the Bible.  Go to your spiritual leaders.  If they are true followers of Christ, they will work and walk through this with you.  Come clean with those you love.  If they love you and are true followers of Christ, they too, will work and walk through this with you.  Get counsel.  Get counsel.  Get counsel.  Do whatever it takes to stop the cycle.  Tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God.  Repent.  And when the enemy of our souls tries to remind you of the mess and your part in it, when he blames you for the fall out.  Stand strong.  Because he will.  Cry out.   Look up.  Reach out.

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