Loving the Beautiful Mess

We're stringing up the heart garland for our Valentine’s party and we snag.

Joshua steals the tape from Caleb, Hope shoves Levi for taking the heart she wanted to hang, and Malakai screams at Shalom for scribbling crayon all over the once white doilies.

Welcome to a typical love fest, complete with tears and howling, in this wild and wonderful home of eight. And it isn’t just the Valentine’s Day preparations, with cookies, icing, sprinkles, tape and paper everywhere. It generally gets messy in here.

Because love is messy business. And we are just a bunch of people, a family with some little kids and some big kids, and some bigger kids, living within four walls, trying to figure out how this business of love works. Anywhere folks are unpacking what it means to love, they are unpacking a whole lot of mess.

“Greater love has no man than this, to lay down his life for his brother.” Laying down one’s life is merely a tactful euphemism for the grisly business of dying. Greater love has no man than this: dying, violently and painfully, to self.

It is part of our very DNA: we fight death. As Dylan Thomas exhorts, “Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” As we die to self, we do just that: rage.

Wrestling with Death leaves battlefields strewn with mess and tears and anguish. A bit like what family life can look like. Kids arguing over toys, teens stomping over chores, parents working out priorities. It's the ugly-beautiful.

When the decibel levels rocket, cue the love song. The lyrics of the CD, whispering Biblical truth, hush the din:

“Love suffers long and is kind;

love does not envy;

love does not parade itself,

is not puffed up;

does not behave rudely,

does not seek its own,

is not provoked,

thinks no evil.”

God, who is Love, speaking of the nature of the love, offers clarity and perspective to those of us in the thick of it.

Learning to be patient… kind… to not seek our own way… is hard business. Deathly business. It doesn’t come naturally and requires practice, scenes repeating themselves day after day. It takes blood, sweat and tears.

Jesus knows. In the utter agony of a night in the Garden of Gethsemane, the Son implored the Father for another way. There wasn’t. Dying wrung the Son of Man Himself out in trickling drops of blood, pooling in grief. Love is messy business.

And Jesus is intimately acquainted with the mess in here. It is Him we imitate when we genuinely love, laying down ourselves.

Taking a deep breath, I step onto the battlefield. (One feels less frustration with the tug and tension of family life when forsaking Hallmark-polished expectations and fully embracing the truth that love is the messiness of dying to self.)

Wrapping up Malakai and Shalom in a sandwich hug, I whisper, "What do you think? Maybe you could try this pink one and Shalom have this red one?" Kai's grin tugs slowly.

I nod towards Hope. “Hey guys, any ideas how we can love here? How might we not seek our own, but honor others above our selves? Got any thoughts?"

Josh smiles weakly and hands the tape back to Caleb. Hope sighs...then jumps down off her chair to help Levi cut out his own paper heart.

Garlands dangle and hearts scatter the table. It is starting to look like a Valentine's party in here. A marvelously, beautiful, grace-washed mess.

Herein is love.

Lord, You did it extravagantly. Loved people in their beautiful mess. Is there a better way to love?




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