How To Clean The Mess

I think I've come pretty close to mastering the advice from my high school therapist when it comes to applying it to specific situations.  I've accomplished near impossible situations in short amounts of time on several occasions.  In fact, I've discovered that I'm better at doing a whole mess of tasks under pressure than I am at planning ahead.  All it really takes is organizing the situations into clutter tasks, lining them up into manageable pieces, and then tackle them like clockwork.  Once its all organized in a series of patterns and pieces, multi-tasking is easy.  Now, applying those principles to the mess going on inside me?  Not so much.

Evaluating those areas of my life that got me to this point in my life aren't so clear.  I can pinpoint patterns, habits, and vicious cycles, but I can never quite originate it back to the source.  That's where the "stuck feeling" shows its ugly head--the inability to answer the question of why so I can get to the "how to" in overcoming it, in not allowing it to define me anymore.  I've often run from this part, because its easier to maintain than it is to seek change, to redefine something that never really had a clear definition in the first place.  But, this isn't going to be like all those other times. 

This isn't about finding a version of myself that makes sense of the all the things that happened to me or didn't happen.  This isn't about finding a way to paint a pretty picture of ugly situations.  In the past, I'd come face to face with those pieces of my life that I couldn't understand, and I didn't know how to find a way to fit it all into a version of myself I thought I should be.  Its hard to fit all those pieces of yourself that envelope hurt, pain, sadness, pieces that leave you broken hearted, and fit them into a functioning part of your life, trying somehow to not allow them to define you, or define how you live your life. 

No. This is about looking the ugly in the face and finding the love, the grace, and the goodness of God at the center of it all.  This is about staring down at all those puzzle pieces of myself and letting go of the hold it has had on my life.  To do that, you don't need to deny that they happened.  You simply need to turn that piece over and see the God-defined version of that part of your life.  Things happen in life that don't make sense.  People will love you, and people will hurt you, deeply...things will happen that shouldn't...life won't go as you planned or expected...but with God, it doesn't end with a period...it is a "to be continued" with an ellipsis...until the good behind it all is revealed and you see the beauty of His hand guiding you through life...until you see Him face to face...and it all comes full circle.

So, how do you clean the mess from the inside out?  You take one day at a time, and begin it by asking God to reveal to you what's on His version of the puzzle pieces He's putting into place.  Before you know it, you'll begin to see this person He's recreated and the life He's redefined through the filter of His amazing grace and love that has been there all along.