“Mess.”
I can remember when my youngest son was just two, looking matter-of-factly at the spilled box of spaghetti noodles on the kitchen floor, saying, “Mess, momma, mess.” He wasn’t upset, he wasn’t happy, he was just stating the mechanics of the moment as he saw them – “Mess”.
That’s how I feel today.
I feel like I’m standing in observance a box of all my colorful emotions that are spilled out across the floor. “Mess.” There’s some happy over there. It’s sort of yellow with touches of orange. Right next to it is the gray colored concern and the black worry. Splayed out directly across from that is the white hot guilt (white hot because it’s not what you think it is and it seems to be in everything today). Dot all of this with broken blue and green pieces of sadness and want. There is a little tiny bit of joy out there – those are the bright pieces of rainbow. Rainbow, because of God’s promises.
The thing is, I don’t feel like scooping them up and placing them all neat and tidy in their box right now. Today, in this very moment, I’m sort of dependent on each one of those emotions. They are comfortable. I do really like the way happy feels, and I cannot get enough of the joy rainbow, either. But, as crazy as it sounds, I’m finding that the other colors are playing an important role in my today, too.
In her book, Unglued, Lysa Terkeurst writes,
“Our emotions are what enable us to drink deeply from love and treasure it. And yes, we also experience difficult emotions such as sadness, fear, shame, and anger. But might these be important as well?”
“God gave me emotions so I could experience life…”
I’m experiencing life. That’s it! I AM experiencing life! Praise God, I am experiencing life, even with my box dumped out all over the floor. It is a mess, indeed. But it’s a beautiful mess to the Master Creator. I’m so thankful he loves me when I keep my emotions tucked neatly under cover and even when I toss them out all over the floor.
This is how I’ve spent day 403. Unsure of what I feel exactly. One emotion seems to trump the next, over and over again. I think I’m going to let Jesus have the gray, black, white hot, blue and green crayons, and see if I can put the rest of the colors back into place.
the toenail 
Posted by changedmeforgood on October 10, 2012 at 11:25 am
Thank you for reminding me that our emotions are what help us know we are experiencing life!
Heavenly Father, I thank you for my friend and her mess of crayons. I thank You for using her to reach others and remind them that You love them right in the middle of their mess. That You gave them this mess! And we need to deal with it in ways that honor You. I pray a special peace for my friend. A peace in knowing that D will be protected by You as he shares the Gospel to the lost. That as jesus shines out of him, she can rest in the knowledge that You are on the throne and in control. I thank you again Father God for this blessed family being in my life and part of the people I “do” life with. In Your Son’s Name I pray…