Hope-Filled Mess

it's been an emotional week. a bittersweet week. a week filled with the heightened excitement of the Christmas festivities fast approaching, yet clouded by the sadness of a loved ones time here on earth cut short. a week of sharing tears with the family and friends left behind to pick up the fragmented pieces of their life and gather up what Christmas spirit is left and wearily plod forward, and a week of rejoicing that the beloved Husband, son, daddy, pawpaw, friend gone on before us was ready to meet our Jesus and is home free and safe and living new life in the majestic Glories of Heaven!! Jerome, heaven is a sweeter, brighter homeland than ever before with your arrival!! we didn't get together often, a random night out for dinner her and there, a sporadic evening of catching up around a campfire, or celebrating a birthday, but, we always looked forward to our traditional New Years Eve party and though it may have been months in between our times of hanging out we could always count on picking up with you and Karen right we left off, and always looked forward to playing games, eating to much and laughing harder than we had in awhile. You will be greatly missed and ever so fondly remembered!! you had an infectious laugh, and drew people in with your friendliness and your contagious joy of life and positive outlook, the day we left your services the sky was beyond amazing, there was clouds and sunrays and the heavens breaking apart to let the glorious light shine through at random places and it appeared as though Heaven couldn't contain it's celebration of another Child of God arriving home and like your laugh and your character it was spreading the love and joy around and oozing out of Heaven to your loved ones still here on earth.

 

 Every year it seems I see the Christmas story, season, celebration in a new way. through all the roller coaster of emotions this past week and then hearing heart friends, pew sisters, families vocalize their happiness, their accomplishments and festivities along with a gamut of pain and frustration, anger and heartbreak over a catalog of hurting, heart wrenching, reasons, in my mind I kept seeing the stable and the pure selfless love of our Jesus and Savior to present us with the most priceless gift ever offered us, in coming to this crazy, sin-dirty, messed up, world as tiny babe. I love the Christmas Story, I love how Mary was just an ordinary gal, no big shot celebrity, well known model or from the high class "right Side" of the tracks. She was just Mary, courting, just Joseph, two humble human souls quietly living their humble lives for their God and when He came to them and spoke what was to be, they listened and embraced the news. I cringe sometimes at the frustration I think surely my Father must feel towards me at times, as much as I wish it otherwise it's a blue moon if I actually succeed briefly at getting my ducks all in a row, more often than not it feels like a drunken sloppy attempt to keep afloat and the feeble attempt at a straight line is an exhausted me panting zig as they all zag, to be honest most days I'm not even certain we're even in the same body of water! this is where when I think of  Mary, she inspires me to be heart wide open always for whatever God wants from me, to listen, ears ever tuned to His voice, His direction and calling and then to embrace full on what He asks, to stop being so quick to question and doubt and him haw around but to "roll" with it, fully committed and trusting. I mean think about us and birthing our kids.....a stable, really?? most of us would have been livid bringing precious cargo that we gave up shapely legs, perfect weight and "trim healthy no-mama" waists for, into a very non sterile, filthy delivery room, unequipped with docs, let alone midwives, or latest emergency technology or a hot tub. and once all that sweat, blood and tears was out of the way and we're floating in new baby euphoria and everything is all little pink toes and goo-goo gah-gah, there would be no besties showing up with little cutsie outfits and hugs and gigantic flower and balloon bouquets. but, Mary, she embraced the stable!! she was about to deliver royalty, she could have demanded a penthouse suite, or at least ocean front at the Hilton!! but....she embraced the stable cause she knew her Father and that His plan for her and their son was God ordained. and so our Jesus, delivered in a stable, you know what's in most stables, barns, animal house types of places, right??!! there's the animals of course, the pigs and their own unique nastiness, then the cows, they chew and slobber green, and swish matted toilet brush tails and with them are flies, then theres the horses and more shaking of hairy dusty manes and long stringy hairy tails and hooves that have all manner of evil stuck up in them, then the sheep, with thick dusty, burr filled wool coats and worms, (only experience we ever had with sheep consisted of many worms), then the chickens, that flit and flap and spin hay and peck and grunt and sqawk and poop everywhere every 6 and a half strutty steps and for all these critters there's mites and allergens from the fur and fuzz and hide and wool and feathers, and in the corners theres spiders and cobwebs and high dark corners theres bats and barn swallows and sparrows and the occasional owl and pigeons and there many droppings and under the hay can be rats and snakes and roaches and beady eyed mice, and along with all that is the dried corn for feed or maybe the slop for the pigs and a forgotten hidden egg here or there gone bad, and you combine that all together to create a nasty rank assortment of messy at a level all it's own with dust and dirt and manure and vermin and just nasty disgusting filthy messiness..............yet this...........is where God chose His son to be birthed..........that.......speaks to me.....it speaks life, and comfort and love and HOPE, HOPE of the highest degree, HOPE of the royalist kind!! to me it says my Jesus was born in the perfect delivery room, because my Jesus gets our messy, He embraced messy from birth!! He gets that I mess up royally, that I get angry at my kiddos, and frustrated at the man I love and made a life vow to, that I get jealous, and grumpy, I sin, He gets when I'm at an all time low in sadness or anxiety, in fear or doubt,or just plain irritable, He gets there are times that I don't know how or can't or just plain won't pray. He gets there are times that I just don't want to go to church or worship, or be happy or choose joy or love that particular "thorn" or read His word or ADULT! But....just because He "gets it" that does not give me an excuse to float along doing and living and acting how i want. because i know Him an His great love for me and the price He paid for me that means i also know that He will be my comfort and Life and Love and Hope and that i can invite Him into my dirty messed up humanness every single time, even when it feels some weeks it's every blessed day, or hour!! I love that He doesn't get irritated at me and walk away in a huff, tossing me aside and just give up on me!! He is always running towards me ready to embrace me fully, His ultimate goal in coming into my dirt and filth is to see me running towards Him every time instead of choosing to blindly ineffectively trying so hard and often to go it myself!! I love that hope arrived with life and full of love that long ago day in Bethlehem in the middle of all the messiness, it keeps me going when I feel unstable and fumbling, it provides me we strength to keep running towards My Jesus, to embrace the life He has for me and gives me courage to share His love in whatever messy is around me, giving me hope that no matter how inadequate I feel at times, or how often I feel I fail, He loves me and my mess unconditionally, and some day our running towards each other will end in each others arms, home forever!
food for thought......... ARE YOU PART OF THE INN CROWD, OR THE STABLE FEW............