in the mess

I am neither a hoarder nor a neat-freak, but if there is one thing that wears on me and quickly drives me crazy, it's mess.  I can take it for a bit...lots of our messes represent great-fun painting projects for Nora or jewelry making for Lily or helping in the kitchen for Sofia. My desk a mess means I'm catching up or the floor a mess, that Matt isn't traveling.

But when it's too much or all at the same time or not going away, I struggle until I can fix it.  And lately, there has been a lot of mess that I haven't been able to control.

The roads are a HOT mess, we're switching finance systems in the office and Jodenel's and my's office is getting buried in mess we can't keep up with or figure out. It's been raining for days and days, and with  only what we like to call solar-powered-dryers (i.e....hanging clothes in the sun to dry), the hampers are overflowing and wet towels are never drying and underwear and kitchen towels are hanging on every hook in the house, and the porch continues to flood and even when I mop or wipe a counter-top, the surface stays wet unending because the humidity hangs so heavy.  What a mess.

Everyone has been sick and then sick and then got better and then again sick. From my house to my sisters to my own again, I have wiped a billion boogie noses and been coughed on and sneezed on countless times, I have bleached a million cups and handles and tables only to have them sneezed on again, I have cleaned up hundreds of old tissues and sticky medicine cups, and tonight carried glassy eyed Sofie, burning up through her layers of clothes, to bed again.  So messy.

Yesterday afternoon I spent hours making chicken pie for dinner with Pam and Bill spent hours to and from the airport..only to learn that it wasn't yesterday she was coming, but today. An Emily I've never met wrote just to let me know she was praying, and that same nigh I spent hours finding phone numbers and on the phone and online with local and international doctors and websites, with Julie, trying to figure out how to help Matt, trying to bring him relief and sleep and help.  Nobody is sleeping well through the night...it's been messy and I can't hardly stumble to Nora's crib in the dark without stepping on SOMETHING.

And the biggest mess is that every day, many times a day, for so many weeks now, I've been throwing up and throwing up and throwing up, teaching my classes and caring for my children and trying to cook and clean and being interrupted by messy, awful sickness again, and again, and again.  And it's been hard to appreciate another precious little life when the reality of so much of it is so very messy, on top of so many messes.

And then this afternoon I noticed my friend in China had just written a new post about their rapidly coming transition from life in China to life in America starting next week or so with her husband and three little girls.  She talked frankly about what she WANTED this transition to be and feel, neat and orderly and deliberate and meaningful, and instead about how so much of it has evolved into a messy chaos, stating simply that there IS no beautiful transition without a mess.

I tucked that away somewhere and we drove the girls through the oozing mud 5 miles, 30 minutes down the road.  We dropped them, boogies swished across their faces, at Melissa's where their "trash puppy", rescued from the garbage heap a few months ago, bounded across the yard to meet us.  Still in her work-out clothes, no makeup, Melissa was patiently working with a slew of missionary women in the kitchen, teaching them how to make bread...what it needs to look like and feel like at each stage, gladly adding my three to the floury mess.

Then we picked our way through the sinking mud to Uncle Dave and Aunt Marilyn's, where Dave was pouring sweat and covered in grease, working adamantly on his broken hot water heater, and where Marilyn was sweeping up hair, having just cut Colleen's and chuckling, "second time's the charm!"  It was in that mess I found Dr. Jen, graciously giving up some of her precious time to meet with us and tell me, confirm for me, that while I can't see or feel a baby, while this first 14 weeks sure hasn't FELT like anything but a huge MESS, that this sick season and this expanding waistline is NOT a stomach bug or a virus, but a messy, sweet LIFE.

I laid on Marilyn's bed and Jen pulled the entire ultrasound machine out of a canvas bag the size of a woman's purse.  Resembling some kind of 1980's atari system, complete with an actual roller ball that only moved 1/8 of an inch at a time as she spun it across the tiny screen. Someone donated it once, and it's better than nothing, of course.  It has no sound, so you can't hear a heartbeat, and it is so antiquated that even the well-trained eye of Dr. Jen couldn't see much.  When we could see a faint circle that must be baby's skull, Matt handed me his phone while he manned the lights (off to look at the screen, on to see the buttons) and I took a picture of the screen.

As we tried to distinguish some life in the snowy mess on the screen, baby flipped and then flipped and then kicked and spun and squirmed on the screen, and suddenly, for the first time, there was a precious Lily, a precious Sofie, a precious Nora, the peach-sized life on the screen with a life of his/her own, with a will of his/her own, with a heart of his/her own, doing his/her own thing, beautifully.  Created so intricately by his/her God for a PURPOSE, for a REASON, for a PLAN, for His glory, for His beauty.

Afterwards we sat for an hour with Dave and Marilyn and they recounted the birth story of their precious daughter Valerie, Dave in Columbia for weeks 36-40 and Marilyn delivering down the road here in Haiti 24 hours before he could get home with a missionary friend while everyone else was at the beach, with orphan kiddos playing in the hallway.  Marilyn sits with me while Jen and I talk about risks and plans and pregnancies, and while Matt watches Dave with the water heater, and I'm not alone and never have been.

This transition may not look the way I wanted it to.  It's all been WAY more of a mess than I ever would have planned for.

And heading into this new semester Monday may not be the neat and ready and calm and collected we wanted.

The girl's school is still in inches of concrete dust, and Sofie is still hacking.  My desk is still representing way behind on a new system I wanted to have mastered, and still don't understand.  My work skirts that fit just fine at the Christmas party won't zip and we have five coming for breakfast before church in the morning and a guest room to prepare for number six on her way.  Matt's not at all 100% and my house looks like mama's been sick for about a trimester.

It has threatened to drive me insane or to despair.

But finally that flipping peach blizzard on that low-resolution screen that I can't even feel yet and that undoubtedly was knit together by the mighty hand of God has reminded me that we can't transition into this new year, this new semester, into this new stage, into this new family, without some mess...and that He is profoundly beautiful and able and powerful and at work in the mess of our lives, the mess of our countries, the mess of our families, the mess of our situations, if we'll simply and continually give it to Him.

He works so well in the messes and does great things with them, today in our kitchens and yards and living rooms, in His time in our lives and worlds, as we give them, as we trust.

Praise the Lord.