Five of my kiddos (can you spot them all?) walking with their Papa back from the park in Missoula to the van, where the sixth child (sleeping) and I wait.
It's not often I allow myself to just enjoy the view: my husband and our brood. Nine years ago, I was a very fresh newlywed with a hunk of a husband and nary a thought about children. I even wore a two-piece swimsuit! Now, any thoughts NOT dealing with children have to be squeezed in between diaper changes, filling sippy cups, and explaining how to set up a slide of a cricket's leg for the microscope; and the only value I see in a bikini is for the two-year old who can make a 30-min. YMCA swim involve THREE potty breaks (you ever tried to pull down -- and then back up -- a wet swimsuit on a pudgy 2-yr. old?).
I'm older now and rounder and less inclined to giggle. Now I groan more ... both in getting up and in listening to my children's always oral musings.
But sometimes something makes me STOP and just absorb. We have a mess of children ... and they're messy. Their rooms, their hair, their noses, their bottoms, their incessant forgetting we "don't grab things out of anyone else's hands, even if it's yours," their constant spilling of the cups at the table.
Sometimes I forget with all the cleaning up of messes that we are more than this. I forget that we are more than just a group of people who make our individual messes under the same roof. That with all the wiping and scrubbing and soaking I can never truly clean anything worthwhile. That all my work will have to be redone - the snot and the crumbs and the mud and the filth will be back.
But we are more than that.
We are a glorious mess. To mangle a Woody Guthrie lyric, This Mess Is Bound for Glory. I can clean and sort and declutter and polish, but only HE can perfect.
And the work He has done means that my forever wiping is only temporary. There will be a day when we will meet Him face to face and see Him clearly - no smudges or smears or nagging sense of "I missed a spot." And even today, because of His work, I can boldly approach the throne of God - without adjusting any priestly garments or arranging tinkling bells or fearing death.
And THAT is beautiful.
The LORD is my chosen portion and my cup; you hold my lot. The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.
I bless the LORD who gives me counsel; in the night also my heart instructs me.
Ps. 16:5-8, ESV |
And as I sit and watch my children run and skip and dawdle and holler and sing back to the van with their Papa, I do think about this. For a second, I forget the disgusting state of the floor of the van and think only how blessed I am.
And man, that man is still a hunk.
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