The Messiness of Intimacy

I have this idea of who I am supposed to be. Someone I am supposed to be becoming.

And if I'm not becoming that woman, then I am not on the right path of life. That somehow, I took a misstep along the way and went down a road that has made me more broken instead of more put together and beautiful.

I don't know if you even heard the slogan, "Easy, Breezy, Beautiful Covergirl". I used to hear it was I was younger, or see it on magazine covers, and I always wanted to be that kind of a girl. The kind that walked like the breeze, and looked beautiful and untouchable. The girl that, the older she got, the more beautiful and unbreakable she became. The one who couldn't be hurt or wounded or frazzled. She was perfectly flawless and there was nothing this world could throw at her that could change that.

I still want to be that girl. But now she wears a cross necklace and carries a Bible and has the Holy Spirit inside of her. She is the "Easy, Breezy, Beautiful Christiangirl". She is flawless, holy, righteous, and untouchable by this world. She walks like the breeze and nothing in the world could hurt her, wound her, or even affect her in the slightest. She is unbreakable and outrageously perfect.

So when, instead of getting more put together and radiant as time goes on, I have gotten more and more messy and broken and wounded and hurt, I think I have been getting confused.

Why do I keep messing up more now than I did when I first started following Jesus? Why am I more of a wretched mess now than I was three years ago?! I thought this process was supposed to make me into a beautiful, flawless woman of God, not some runny nosed, teary eyed, incredibly emotional, confused and hurting girl. And so, since I'm not becoming who I was "supposed to become", I must have done something wrong.

Maybe I should have prayed more or loved my friends and family better or given more money to the poor. Maybe I should have exercised more or sang more or taught more or worked more or studied more or read more or read more of the Bible or run faster and faster and further and further and harder and harder... until I collapse in the same wretched mess that I was in to begin with.

I'm just not ok and there's nothing I can do to be ok.

I thought I was supposed to... I donno...look more like one of those great, famous, amazingly heroic Christian people who are all awesome and completely put together and so-not-as-messy-as-I-am.

I mean, I'm supposed to be ready to go out and conquer the world in a couple months when I finally finish this degree. I'm supposed to be getting more prepared during this season of my life, but instead I keep getting more and more untied and inadequate and messed up and unfaithful and just not who I thought I was supposed to be.

Am I the only one who has felt this way before?

I just watched this video this youtube video by Steffany Frizzell called "Always Getting Closer"...soooo good. I finally figured out how to post a video link! But I don't know why it starts in the middle so just rewind it to the beginning if you want to watch it. :)

Anyways, it a long one so if you don't have time I'll just tell you what I took from it. Right when I was feeling completely nasty and unworthy and like I'd totally gone off the path somewhere down the line, I watched this video.

She was talking about how the Lord is actually ok with me being messy with Him - that He is ok when I say things to Him that I can't say to anyone else. Things that, if other people heard me saying them to God, they'd think I was crazy or a heathen or something. But because God knows my heart, and He knows that I love Him and want nothing more than to be close to Him, then when I have to get some things inside of myself out before I can fully focus and talk to Him, He's ok with that.

My messiness and my worries and my problems are not too much for Him to handle.

I can come to Him and tell Him, "This is how I really feel!", and He's ok with that.

Because, after I went through my season of darkness where the Lord felt so far away, I've been traumatized that something like that might happen again, and that it would be my fault if it did. Because I think that part of the problem that happened when things got dark was that I accused God and said things to Him that I shouldn't have said. And if I hadn't said those things, He wouldn't have gone far away and left me alone.

I don't honestly know if any of that is true or why I went through the darkness and why God felt so far away. I really don't. Someday I will, even if it's when I finally see Him face to face, but right now I just don't.

But anyways, like I was saying, I think that after all of that (whatever "that" is) occurred, and God felt so far away for the first time in my life, I've been afraid of somehow making Him angry at me again and saying things to Him that will make Him leave.

So, as I've realized just recently that I haven't really sat down and talked to God about my "mess" (what I'm really thinking and feeling and desiring - rather than what I think He wants me to be thinking and feeling and desiring) in like a year and a half...at least.

I have felt His presence with me and still know when He's asking me to do something and I've even prayed to Him and worshiped Him and all that. I'm still doing everything I can to make Him happy!!!

But I haven't given Him what He really wants - the chance to hold me in my messiness.

I've actually been trying to impress Him by how good I've been.

Silly me. I should have known that He sees right through all my walls. He knows I'm just trying to keep Him out of my messy room.

I remember a dream Misty Edwards told about that she had. She was asleep in the dream and then she suddenly woke up to a loud, violent pounding on her bedroom door. She jumped out of bed and started trying to clean everything up in her room because she didn't what whoever it was to see how messy her room way.

The knocking got louder and louder and louder, but she kept trying to keep the person from coming in, "One second! I'm almost there!!".

The person finally just flung open her door and it was Jesus. He had this look of fire in his eyes. She knew that He wanted to come in and eat with her, and that He didn't even care about her messy room because He'd come for her. He had brought a blanket with Him and He threw His arms out and spread it across the floor, right on top of all the mess. And they sat down and ate together, in the middle of her messy room.



It's scary to me that Jesus wants me to let Him into my mess. I used to do it when I was a new, baby Christian. I would write about all the messy, yucky stuff inside of me, because I didn't know any better and He was all I had. I go back and read those journals sometimes and marvel at how straight up honest I was. But since I went to "Bible college" for a year and have learned all these other Christian things since then, I guess I thought that meant that I was supposed to have it all together or something.

Like, now that I'm a "big girl", I have to act like one or something.

Well, I may be a big girl, but I still make messes. They're just bigger now. And the only way I'm going to really know God and let Him know me, is if I stop pretending that I'm already perfect and let Him come in and share a meal with me in the middle of my mess.

I need to be ok with Him seeing all the things that I hate that are inside of me and I have to be ok with the process taking a long time. I have to be willing to get messier and messier and messier until the end of this process is finally completed when I see Him face to face. Because the closer people get to me, and the closer God gets to me, the messier things are going to get.

Because I'm a mess!!! I make mistakes! I do dumb things! I go crazy sometimes!

And I have to let God, and my closest friends, see that mess if I'm going to get anywhere on this journey.

Steffany Frizzell said, "All of life is the undoing, until we're finally completely undone when we see God face to face".

So maybe instead of imagining some future version of myself, who is more put together and more holy and more spiritual and more *whatever*, I need to be ok with a future version of myself who might actually be messier than I am right now. Maybe she will cry more than I do and say more dumb things than I do and maybe even let more people into her heart.

I have to be ok with becoming undone and frazzled and falling apart - even more then than I am now.

I just remembered that my Auntie calls doing art, "making messes".

It's because, when she's making art, every single time, it has to get really messy in the room before the art finally comes out of it all. There's no art if there's no mess. If she isn't ok with making a mess, she'll never make anything worth looking at.

She'll never make anything that has life in it if she's not willing to let the art go through the messy process of becoming beautiful.

I think I get it now.