Today I sat in a car wash lobby on my lunch break, hoping they could solve yesterday’s mess.
I pulled out the car seats, washed the covers in hot water on heavy, scrubbed every inch of the plastic parts, wiped down the seat belts, I did everything I could think to do and yet my car still smells like puke. I don’t see any remnants of yesterday’s mess, but my car still reeks of sickness. I did everything I could on my own so now I have to leave it to the experts, the professionals. I’m a real person behind these words with real-life messes and distractions.
This week’s mess was a vomiting toddler in the backseat. A mess I couldn’t fully clean up on my own, so here I sit in a lobby asking for help from someone more experienced at fixing this kind of mess. This wasn’t in my writing plans or my life plans either for this week.
But here I sit.
Life throws us curve balls.
Our plans are interrupted.
Our efforts thwarted.
Darkness, sickness, or sadness can come fast, without warning, and can overturn our days, our weeks, or sometimes linger longer.
We can get distracted from our plans or be required to put our plans on hold.
We find ourselves in messes we don’t know how to clean up. Even when we think we can solve the mess on our own, we sometimes have a lingering problem we cannot see, but we know it’s there. Sometimes our messes have to be addressed by a professional.
Today my toddler is back to herself, but the lingering smell in my car reminds me how hard yesterday was for her.
Isn’t this situation like our relationship with God?
The world dumps a mess into our lives and we try our best to solve it on our own.
We “scrub and clean and wash” trying to fix the problem on our own, but even when it looks clean we still have that “lingering smell” reminding us we cannot solve everything in our own power, reminding us of the hard, showing us things may look clean but the problem is not fully solved. We require God to find that root cause and solve it. We require help beyond ourselves. We require the creator who IS the expert at solving our problems and cleaning up our messes. Give your mess to him, friend… I promise he is the ultimate expert at cleaning it up.