Messiness.

I’m sitting at my desk surrounded by piles and piles of clothes, stacks and stacks of CD’s (I’m old), and a mountain of photographs dating back to 1985. I do not do well in a disorganized mess. I like order or as close to it as I can manage. But, alas, I’m sitting in this chaos. I have been trying to sell two dressers of mine for the last two months. I finally got a willing merchant and so I had to unpack all the drawers that were filled with the aforementioned items. The merchant of Philadelphia is currently in the middle of moving and long story short has not yet come by to pick up the dressers and may not be able to for another day. Oh, and he was supposed to pick them up yesterday. Two days of mess. I’d insert the scary faced emoji here.

To add to the clutter, I am unemployed due to the pandemic and my entire industry has completely gone away and will not be returning anytime soon. Today July 19, 2020 I was supposed to be flying from Houston back home to Philadelphia. Today should have been the end of a six-month contract of work, but it was unfortunately cut four months short due to covid_19. Four months ago, exactly, in fact, I was sent home. Today would have been the start of my journey to buy my first home. Today would have been a celebration of seeing family and friends. But instead, today I’m sitting in this mess. I don’t think this current situation has been easy or fun for anyone. For the first time, maybe in all our lifetimes, we can say the entire world is in the same boat.

But what if this isn’t the first time? I don’t mean we’ve suffered through a pandemic together like this before. I’m talking about that feeling of being stuck in a mess. Despite the literal mess of physical clutter around me as I type, I’m also familiar with emotional messes. I think we can all agree that at some point in our lives, we haven’t had it all together. Every single person alive today. Every race, every nationality, every size and shape, no matter your gender, sexual orientation, or what religion you practice. Everyone of us has a story to tell about that time we were a mess. Isn’t that kind of awesome? I don’t mean the messes themselves. I mean the similarity we all share. The fact that all humans can connect with each other on that level of vulnerability. We’ve all been at the bottom. It’s not the first time we’ve all been at the bottom together.

So much is going on in the world, especially in these last four months. I don’t think I’ve ever witnessed in my 35 years on earth such divisiveness. Everyone thinks they have had it worse than the next person. Everyone thinks their hardships are worse than the others. But what is the scale that weighs an individual’s personal struggles? Who decides the weight of one person’s story and compares it to the next? Can any person alive do that? No! None of us have the right to decide whose struggle is greater or less than another’s. The only authority over that comes from God. But he doesn’t use a scale and he doesn’t compare our struggles! All he does is ask for them. He wants us to give them to Him. He wants to take the weight, however heavy, and lift it off all of us.

If I gathered up all these piles of clothes, and stacks of CD’s, and the mountain of old photos and threw them all in a big box I wonder how heavy it would be. It’s quite a big mess so I gather it would be too heavy for a single person to carry on their own. I would need help with the lifting. As I look at the two empty dressers that used to hide this whole mess, I can’t help but think of the mess I’ve been hiding inside myself. Don’t we all hide our messes inside sometimes? I think most people are particularly good at hiding their mess. Other’s not so much! Some people are a little bit more out in the open. And maybe that’s not necessarily a bad thing. No matter who it is, maybe if we all exposed our messes from the drawers in which we’ve been hiding them, then God could be there to help us lift the heavy box. How great would it be that if, instead of fighting over who has struggled the hardest, we joined together through the bonds of ALL our struggles collectively and gave them all to God?

I know from experience that my last statement is already true. I’ve gone through messy times before and I’ve always come out the other side better than before. It’s obvious that the entire world is in one huge mess right now. Nothing new, really. It always has been. I think the drawers are just open now and the mess is overflowing. I know that God has always been there for me to help sort it all out. I pray He can do the same for anyone reading this. And I also pray that the merchant of Philly will come take away these dressers once and for all!