Beauty in the mess

As I write this column, I’m coming off almost two weeks of sickness at my house. It started with my youngest, Sela, went through big sister Kate, and finally settled in with me. That indomitable virus combined with a particularly cold and wet week sent me to a pretty dark place a few mornings ago, hunched over my trusty notebook, hurriedly writing in the minutes before the kids woke up. I found myself praying that in the midst of everything — the sickness, the house in disarray, the laundry undone, the missed school days — God would make something beautiful out of it all, that I wouldn’t be so caught up in my own mess that I missed the beauty of an ordinary day, illness and all. 

So how did the day go, you ask? Well, it was a sick day. There were Saltines and Gatorade, thermometers and Motrin, Tinkerbell on the TV. But there were also a few moments of grace. That morning, Kate and I flopped down on the couch, both worn out from hustling a now-well Sela into school and getting our feverish selves back home. Kate lay on one end of the couch, and I lay on the other. We covered up with a blanket, our legs entwined underneath it to keep warm. I looked over at her little flushed cheeks and was so thankful to be able to spend the time with just my big girl, even if we were sick. 

Later that afternoon, I cut up some pieces of cantaloupe for Sela to eat after her nap. She’d been asking for cantaloupe for a few days, but we’d finished all we had. I managed a trip to the Pig the day before, so I picked one up. When I went in her room to get her, I held her and asked her if she wanted some cantaloupe. You would have thought I’d told her we just put a swimming pool in the backyard. It was such a seemingly trivial thing for me to do, but she hugged me so tight, then put her little hands on the sides of my face, kissed me, and said, “Thank you, Mama!” 

These moments felt like a banquet of loveliness in the midst of a week and a half of one thing after another. The more I thought about them, the more I realized that the prayer for God to make something beautiful out of the mess and chaos of our life was really about God making something beautiful out of me — out of all of us. More than ever this past week, I felt the frailty of my flesh. One fever/stomach virus and all my strength — physical, mental, and emotional — was zapped. But God did show us beauty, and He is making something beautiful out of us lowly creatures. I rarely see it, but I trust it. Those moments of beauty in the middle of a messy day reminded me that somehow, He’s slowly turning us from chipped and broken vessels into something whole and beautiful. 

Lauren can be reached at LaurenKDenton@gmail.com. You can also find her on Twitter @LaurenKDenton.