26 Apr This Beautiful Mess

My house was totally clean and stayed that way for two weeks once. It was unbelievable, really, and my husband and I stood in awe of the order and quiet in our home while our three girls were in Chicago staying with their grandparents after the birth of their baby brother.

I’ll never forget the first day I was alone with my baby boy and the house was completely silent. I enjoyed the quiet naps and quality time with my baby. My husband cracked up when he came home to see me reading a book on the couch while nursing the baby in complete peace. “Enjoy it while it lasts!,” he said.

And we did. Until a week had passed and my heart ached for my little girls. I missed their extra-zealous squeezing of their brother and having to tell them “too much love! He needs to breathe!” I missed their Lego creations spread out in our sunporch with an earnest entreaty to “Mommy, come see my castle!” I even missed having to wipe peanut butter and jelly off my face when they kissed me.

It hit me hard during that two weeks that having a clean and tidy home doesn’t matter much if the people you love aren’t with you enjoying it.

Embracing the Chaos

I grew up in a home where order and tidiness was taught and lived out by my parents and thus I enjoy and value having a clean and orderly home.

But I also have four kids ten and under in my home. And often friends and neighbors too. And somewhere in the last decade of parenting I have found my heart delighting so much more in the beautiful mess being made all around me than worrying about the laundry to be folded and the crumbs on the floor and the fingerprints on my windows.

We hired a company to seed and re-seed the grass in our yard because there are so many little feet trampling all over it. When it rains and they play, our back yard becomes a muddy mess. And no matter how many times I instruct the kids not to use our raised garden beds as a jumping platform for our 60 foot rope swing, plants inevitably get crushed.

So sometimes all these messes get pretty tiring and even a little frustrating. But as I was spraying six kids in my back yard this week with our garden hose on a summer-like day, I delighted in the mess of it all: the water spraying fast, the grass sticking to their little feet and legs, the mud squishing in their toes, and especially their shrieks of laughter.

Yes, I want our home to be clean and our yard to look nice. But even more than that, I want our home to be lived in and our yard enjoyed by many. 

Yes, the laundry has to be put away and the dirt mopped off the kitchen floor (and, by the way, if my kids are making the messes they absolutely have to help with the clean up). But first and foremost, life must be lived!

How about you? It’s perfectly fine to love a clean and organized house, but does your love for the orderly hinder you from just enjoying your home and (more importantly) the people in it?

Don’t worry about inviting people over when your house isn’t perfectly clean or tidy. I’ve found over the years that most people could care less if our house looks perfect – they are just happy to enjoy life together.

It’s not a contradiction to say that God delights in order as well as in beautiful messes. So let’s open our hearts, hands, and homes to embrace all the amazing people God has placed in our lives – and the even the mess that comes with it.