T. Hanna

~2017

Beautiful Mess

 

 

  After watching an inspiring movie tonight, called Mom’s Night Out, I was bombarded with revelation after revelation of who I am.

My whole life, maybe not all 28 years of it, I have sensed this ongoing need to be perfect. I think I really began noticing this “need” in high school. I recall going through a dark time when I continuously asked myself, God and others if I was truly saved. I would bend over backwards to be perfect and make sure that I wasn’t messy. When I would fail to keep the mess out, I would give up and go head first into the mess and not care what God or others thought. This lead to more messes. I was never enough for myself. I never felt like enough for my family, my friends or even myself. I think in my heart, I believed that if Jesus had come to live inside me, I should be perfect. Right? Doesn’t that make sense? Jesus is perfect, I should be. Yes, God continuously asks us to strive for perfection and holiness because He is perfect and holy and one day we will be too, but not in this life. I know all of this and yet I have been living as if I need to be perfect in every way.

Disclaimer: if you haven’t watched the movie and still want to, don’t continue reading until after you have. I will spoil a lot.

The main character is constantly asking herself what’s wrong with her. She feels like life isn’t enough. She can’t understand why she is struggling as a mother so much, and yet she dreamed of being a mother her whole life. The life she has is exactly what she wanted and yet she fights herself to find more. 

(Again, spoiler alert) At one point she realizes that she feels that she is not enough. In the end, she comes to realize that she is exactly what God wants her to be. She is His masterpiece and she is enough for Him. That is enough. I don’t need to know that my son thinks I’m enough, that my husband thinks I’m out-of-this-world enough, or that my friends say I am enough. None of that matters. It doesn’t even matter that I don’t think I am enough. God says I am enough. He created me. He gave me my specific task in life. He gave me my specific life, with all of its trials and tribulations, the heartache, the memories, the pain, the humiliation, the brokenness, the messiness. He sees it all and He still says that I am enough. He has designed my life the way He sees fit and He is using it for His glory. I am His masterpiece. I am a beautiful mess. The thing is, I don’t see what He is shaping me into. He’s not finished with me. I took ceramics, I know that you start off with an ugly hunk of wet and misshapen clay. I also know that at times, what you are trying to make isn’t working and so you smash the art and begin again. Who knows where He is at in my life? He does. That is enough. I am His beautiful mess.