Messy Lives

Admit it. Life is messy.

There never is a single day that goes by where we don't make a mess of things.

Everyday there are dishes and laundry and cooking and cleaning and dusting and vacuuming, the list is endless. 

We also have a tendency to mess up our lives. 

Calling your friend a nasty word, you just messed that friendship up.

Calling your boyfriend to tell him you don't love him anymore, you just messed that relationship up.

Not thinking before you say something offensive to a stranger, you just messed up any potential for a friendship.

Or even throwing your phone in a hasty moment of fury, you just messed your phone up.

We lead messy lives.

We make mistakes all the time, it's part of being human. But the beauty comes in when we realize that we've made a mess of things and realize that we have to fix things.

Which of course, we can't do on our own.

Think about when you're a little kid, and you make a really big mistake on your homework, and you know that something is wrong, but you just don't know how to fix it.

So you go to your dad and ask him if he can see what the problem is. 

Since he has done this sort of problem before, he can see your mistake. 

So you have to ask him to help you fix it.

He explains to you what you did wrong, then he shows you how to correct it. You come out at the end a little smarter, and a whole lot wiser.

But it was kind of embarrassing to admit that you were wrong in the first place, because nobody likes to be wrong. You hate to admit to your dad that you don't know what you are doing and that you messed something up, and that you don't know how to fix it.

But you wisely went to him anyway, admitting your mistake and asking for help.

It the same way when we mess things up in our lives. 

When you break a friendship by saying something nasty, by starting a rumor, by relentlessly making fun of someone, you know that you have broken something that was good.

And eventually, you regret what you said or did. But your pride is still there, telling you that you were right, that the other person shouldn't be so sensitive, but deep down, you know what you did was wrong.

So you lay in bed at night, unsure of how you can go about fixing this while still keeping your pride intact.

Let me tell you a secret.

You can't.

In order to fix a mistake, you first have to admit that there is a mistake. How can you fix something if you won't admit that it needs fixing?

So you swallow your pride and admit to your friend that you were wrong, that you were being a total jerk. 

Then you have to apologize, which is sometimes the hardest part.

But if you want to save that friendship, you have to do it. So you apologize. 

They might not always forgive you. Sometimes you have done something so terrible to them that they might have a hard time forgiving you. There still might not ever be a friendship between you again. But you have to try and apologize, then give them the time they need to tend the wound that you so thoughtlessly gave them.

Maybe in the end, you can mend your friendship.

But only if first, you are willing to swallow your pride and admit that you made a mess of things.

Because we all live messy lives. And we all have to admit that. 

And sometimes our messy lives can be beautiful.

But only if we are willing to let them be.

So don't worry about how messy your house is, don't worry about the messes that have already been cleaned up.

Just admit it, your life is a mess. Don't proudly say that you've got it all together, because you don't, nobody does. If you want to share your messy life with someone else, you can't pretend to be something you're not.

Just be messy. 

Be willing to admit that you're messy.

Be willing to clean up the mess.

Cheers!