Embrace the Messy

June 30, 2017  - By Kelly Strickland

This post was written by Kelly Strickland. You can read more about Kelly at the bottom of the post!

Learning to let go of the perfect “quiet time” with the Lord has been quite a difficult journey for me. My love language is quality time and so when our son Will came along I realized I had much less time (or at least “quality” time) during my day .

I felt like if I couldn’t give Christ my best, then I couldn’t give Him anything.

There are two major flaws with this logic:

  1. I don’t actually bring anything to the table during my time with the Lord in and of my own accord anyway. My righteousness is like filthy rags… so there’s that. 
  2. The Lord wants to meet me in the mess. In the very center of it. In the middle of the craziness and chaos and insanity of it all. Because He can handle it. 

He doesn’t just meet His children in quiet, perfect little coffee shops. He meets us at the kitchen sink while washing the massive pile of five-day-old dishes (gross, but reality). He meets us walking to the mailbox on a hectic evening when all we want is two seconds to ourselves without being interrupted. He meets us in traffic jams, at our office desk, standing in line at Panera, changing the 87,453rd dirty diaper of the day, and everywhere in between.

He does this because He’s a big God, who can handle the imperfect scenarios. He can concentrate on me even when I have trouble concentrating on Him. 

So today I did my (less than quiet) quiet time at the kitchen table while Will ate puffs and stole my pen and screamed “puh-puh” randomly at the puppies outside (because that’s what he calls our 8 year old not so puppy-ish dogs). I read scripture to him and embraced the messy. And it felt good and right and honest. 

Isn’t that what grace is about after all? A chance to let go of perfection and just be. And the Lord will take care of the rest. Because He is a big God. He can handle it. So let Him.

embracing the messy,

Kelly

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  1. Bluehouse2906@aol.com says:

    Thank you, just showing up for a quiet time is sometimes all that can be managed.

  2. This is totally me! I’m very type-A, so I always feel like if my quiet time isn’t perfect it "didn’t matter." I’m slowly learning that that’s not true! I have a little one on the way, so I know that it’ll just get even more imperfect. 😉 Loved this post!

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