What a Mess

I started a new job recently. To earn an income while I’m working on launching a freelancing business, I signed up to clean rooms at a local motel.

(It’s actually a pretty funny choice of jobs. My family and our pet dust bunnies will attest that at home I’m not exactly the world’s tidiest mom. If you come to visit, don’t open the closets, just sayin’. But I digress.)

I quickly learned the hotel-room routine. You knock on the door, hoping to not disturb anyone. “Housekeeping!” Another knock, just to be sure. Then a turn of the key, a peek inside with one last warning call, and the door swings open.

Bathroom. White towels huddle on the floor and sprawl on the counter. Used coffee cups and a stray sock poke up from the garbage can. Water spots and toothbrush overspray freckle the mirror; slightly mushy bar of soap melts onto the sink.

Beyond, the bedroom. Rumpled bedspread, pillows lounging against one another, tv remote half-buried in the sheets. Curtain askew, lamp nodding off at odd angles near the pile of travel brochures on the desk. Sand in the carpet.

There it is. A room that’s been lived in. A mess.

But then again…

A mess from another angle is evidence of life being lived.

The thought of the anonymous strangers who have inhabited this space gives me unexpected pleasure. As I restore order I see them doing what they do every day – washing their face, brushing their teeth, having a cup of coffee. Living.

I see them kicking back and enjoying an evening movie or the morning news. Standing at the window to watch the sun rise over Lake Huron. Planning their day’s adventures and shaking out the sand from an afternoon at the beach.

It’s a good mess. It makes me happy, having this moment to be tangibly in the presence of another life in progress.

Rags and cleaners make quick work of the bathroom, whisking cleanliness into its place like Mickey Mouse’s magic mops. I rub the mirror to a spotless shine, hoping the next person who will assess themselves in its reflection sees how lovely they are. The cups need to be restocked, a wrapped bar of soap placed on its corner of the sink, tilted jauntily at a welcoming angle.

The pillows are reluctant as I wrestle them from their cases, but the bed is soon a pile of stripped linens that are toted out of the room in a giant armful. I have not yet learned to produce that satisfying snapping sound when flipping open fresh sheets, but no matter; in moments the mattress is shrouded in clean white. A blanket and then a comforter add cozy layers, the whole of it smoothed and tucked and fluffed into appealing neatness, wrapped like a gift for the next day’s weary traveler.

A quick go-round with a dusting rag leaves the room tidy, order restored. The sand in the carpet yields to the gentle tug of the vacuum. Curtain and lamp shade straightened, clock and phone set to rights.

I survey my work, seeing it through the eyes of its next occupants. Yes. I think they’ll like it.

Oh, they’ll mess it up again, of course. That’s all right. It means they’re busy living.

----

Some of my favorite stories from Jesus’s 33 years on earth are about messy people. People who didn’t have it all together, who were seen by most others as distasteful at best.

Laborers. Rough sailors. Contagious sufferers. Embezzlers. Liars. Traitors. Cowards. Whiners. Impulsive makers of poor decisions. Ordinary, messy people who intersected with Jesus as He went about His ministry.

He never treated them as messes, though. Instead, He ate with them, relaxed with them, defended them, lived among them.

Jesus didn’t look at messy lives from the same angle as everyone else. He didn’t just see unacceptable failings and inadequacies. He saw lives being lived. Lives for whom He had come to give His life. Saw them, accepted them, chose them. He encouraged them to tidy up some of the loose ends of their lives, not as a condition of loving them but as a result of it.

If you look in my closets – or under my beds – or inside my head – you’re going to see a mess. I sooo much do not have it all together. Don’t leave me standing in the spotlight alone here – you’re a mess too, right? A few spots on your mirror distorting your self-image, life-management skills rumpled, emotional lampshade askew?

Yep, we’re a mess…but a mess from another angle is evidence of life being lived.

We go, we do, we try, we make mistakes, we bungle things up a bit. And like the everyday messy people Jesus chose as His friends, we are still loved by Him. He cleans us up and we get to start again tomorrow.

It’s not such a bad thing, being a mess. We’re just people, doing the best we can. We’re just God’s chosen messy people, living the lives we’ve been given by the One who gave us Life.

I can’t help thinking…if Jesus sees the life behind our messes, sees us not as failures but as people He loves living the life God has given us…perhaps, just maybe, we can do the same for one another.

God grant that our eyes look beyond the messes we encounter each day to see with ever-new compassion the lives in progress all around us.

First published in The Alpena News on September 15, 2018