lemony fresh

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BIG NEWS.



I got new goggles and they make me excited to wake up tomorrow morning. I am determined to become a swimmer at the new wellness club I am a member of. I imagine myself passing the old, hairy men and wrinkly, shockingly big-chested women in their respective lanes as I zoom by in my awesome new eye protectors, leaving the wannabe swimmers in my wake.

If only I didn't look like this when I swim:
nose plugged & moving at a glacial pace

When I first tried them on I felt like they were suctioning my eyeballs out...a feeling I have only experienced when I dream I am in outer space without a proper space suit. Going blind wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, though. Blind piano players are automatically 1000 times cooler. Although I would never get to see my mother's face when we watch the Bachelorette together ever again...that would be the one downside.

enthralled


BIG NEWS NUMBER 2:
I just signed up for a half-marathon...whaaaaaaa???

For those of you who didn't know me in my high school (or worse, middle school :O) years, I wasn't exactly the...skinniest of my prepubescent friends.
i always wondered why no boys asked me to skate with them at the skate-a-thon
I never thought I'd be happy with my weight. And I especially thought I'd never consider myself a runner. And yet her I am, probably weighing less than I did in this 8th grade picture. I have become such a better daughter of God by learning how to take care of my body. From learning perseverance when running up a steep hill, to self control when someone brings Oreos to the party. We learn that nail polish isn't the most important thing in the world, because sometimes you lose your toenail due to excessive running anyways (tmi?). God is good, and I'm going to run 13.1 miles on September 23rd at 7 am in the morning, baaaaaaahhhhhh!

I have had this recent fascination with messes. My boys & I made snow globes today and the back deck was covered in clay chips and paper towels and plastic baggies. I came inside and cucumbers were everywhere, grated cheese was all over the counter,

and I loved it?

Something about the process of cleaning gets me. How it sucks, bending down and wiping up all the cheese off the floor. Delving into the bushes like the nature girl we all know I am to get the blown-away paper towels. It sucks, but something is happening. Things are improving, misplaced items are being put back where they should be and we got the dog to eat up all the extra clay shavings (KIDDING).

And in life. Messes happen. Ryan could start out being this really great guy and then end up being a fully equipped TOOLBAG after only four episodes (HAD TO include a Bachelorette reference, I'm sorry). Things don't go how we want it. Relationships waver, complications cloud our judgment, past disappointments scare us from doing the right thing, and insecurities isolate us. Friends are at different stages of life, belief turns into doubt, worry inhibits our potential. Hormones and junk food mix terribly to produce a chubby and self-conscious adolescent. Sometimes our toenails fall off!!!!

And it's a MESS.

And sometimes God doesn't clean it up right away. Sometimes He lets us sit with our mess, looking around at the cucumbers everywhere, the paper towels in the bushes. The laundry we should have put away days ago. He lets us look at that and live in our choices. The inevitable murkiness and muddled circumstances that result from an imperfect humanity ruled by selfishness and pleasure. He lets us see the result of that, and He doesn't arrive with Windex and a vacuum right away. He's not Mr. Clean.

And so the other day I was praying about a mess. Not a cucumber one, a life one. One of those unavoidable, unfixable, human relationship messes that can't be cleaned even by the miraculous Pledge multi-surface wipes. A mess that can't be shoved into the closet real quick before mom has a cow.

I don't like those messes so much.

So I was praying, one of my favorite things to do lately--talk to the One who loves me most, why don't we do that more?--about these figurative paper towels blowing my peace around. About the clay pieces cluttering my heart. The mandarin orange juice that erupted all over my faith because I'm not so good with normal life skills...like can openers.

But I stopped and a gnawing question ate at my heart until I had to ask it out loud.

What is on Your heart today, Father? What breaks you? What is hurting You?


And so many people flooded my mind. So many broken, lonely, lost people pounded into my heart, and I completely forgot about my mess. We spend so much time spilling our hearts to God, we forget to ask Him to share with us a bit of His own.

There are still some messes in life. But something is different. I can live in the mess. I have lived through chubby adolescent days, dark friendless days, awkward angry days, and gone into deep, uncharted chasms (which aren't very clean).  And maybe cleanliness isn't the point. Maybe my peace, serenity, and comfort comes not from an uncluttered, kept room, but the power of sharing in the sufferings and broken heart of my Savior.

And that is great news because now that I'm thinking about it, I am legitimately worried the dog may have eaten some of the clay on the porch.

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