A plaque I made and put in our kitchen as a reminder to all the messes in our house and our life, “It is all prayer.”
The Holy Mess
Lisa A. McCrohan
Standing in the mess at my feet
of Legos, shoes, and markers on the floor;
staring at the mess on the kitchen island
of water bottles, pistaccio shells,
and half-eaten bread crusts;
holding the mess of emotions within me,
the unspoken griefs, the poems half written,
the longings rising within me;
meeting my beloved’s eyes from across the
mess that runs from the kitchen to family room,
across the years of loving and forgiving,
and quietly smiling
the sudden realization comes over me that
I am standing on holy ground
and every word I utter –
whether it be “thank you” or “holy crap,”
“help me” or “no way,”
“I can’t do this” or “please” –
it’s all prayer.
This holy mess.
This holy mystery
of loving and living,
holding and letting go,
the crying out and the shouts of joy,
the not-knowings and the moments of
complete knowing
however I am in it –
a mess and stomping my feet
with tears streaking my cheeks
or collected and sitting in lotus
with hands cupped serenely in my lap –
it’s all prayer.
And I realize that the Divine doesn’t desire perfection.
The Divine just wants to join me in the mess.
Lisa McCrohan,
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Brian called me yesterday, “Lisa, I have some more tragic news.” I braced myself. You read that right: “more”. Just as our community is grieving the loss of our dear friend Jennifer Leach (and while her life, her dying, and her death have also been “beautiful and so full of grace”, it has also been hard), Brian calls me with “more” tragedy: friends lost their baby.
I just sat there, stunned. This wasn’t expected. This wasn’t supposed to happen. This wasn’t in the plan.
As I sat there moaning – yes, moaning – and breathing with Brian on the phone, I heard my five year old daughter’s voice from over in the kitchen. She was playing with my mom and dad who were here to watch her while I volunteered at my children’s school that afternoon. I looked over at them playing. The aliveness – the shear aliveness of her voice and my mom’s voice struck me.
Then I looked at the kitchen. It was a mess. Our family room was a mess.
I thought about another mom from our school community who is having her fifth baby today, seven months after her husband died in a car accident.
I heard laughter again coming from the kitchen.
I heard Brian crying on the phone.
I felt the mess within me of emotions and sensations without labeling them. I just felt them.
I looked at the clock. I had to get going to volunteer. I wiped my tears. I walked into the kitchen and hugged them goodbye. And then the plaque I made years ago and put in our kitchen caught my eye: “It is all prayer.”
And I heard, “It is all prayer, Lisa. All of it.”
And I remembered this poem I wrote last year, The Holy Mess.
Whether we are silently grieving or kicking and screaming,
whether we are dancing for joy or seething in agitation,
whether we are still in shock or angry and wondering “why,”
whether we are exhausted at the end of the day and just needing it to be quiet or we are joyfully putting our children into bed…
it is all prayer. It’s all holy ground. A holy experience, a “holy mystery of loving and living.”
In our parenting, in our working, in our loving, and our living — instead of trying to “perfect” it with heavy “should’s” and “ought to’s” — can we imagine that the Divine – however each one of us defines that for ourselves – doesn’t desire perfection? The Divine just wants to join us. The Divine wants to just be alongside us, however we are — depressed, angry, sad, joyful, numb, aching, calm…mess or not.
I believe in an incredibly compassionate God, one who so desires us to rest our ideas of perfection and instead just come and lay our heads on God’s shoulder and feel God’s tender embrace.
“Come, let me be with you in this mess,” I can hear God saying – to me, to all of us, to our world.
Such tender compassion is healing balm to our wounded world. And the mess? It becomes…the very place we encounter the Divine and we encounter life again.
***************************
Dear Readers, maybe you are staring at a mess in your life – a mess in the family room, a mess in your marriage, a mess in your heart. What if whatever you are feeling in this very moment IS prayer? And what if you dropped the guilt about how you “should” be in it and instead felt God asking to JOIN you in it?
Blessings,
Thank you Lisa for reminding us of the light in the mess of daily living and that we are not alone.
The cycle of life and death- it is not always easy, tidy or pain free. The mess of grieving, of illness, of growing up, of leaving home, of working the grind, of losing the job, of finding ourselves, of cleaning the house- it all just is. Inviting all in, allowing, being. We are not alone.
Jennifer, you say this so beautifully. No, it’s not always “easy” – or pain-free and tidy. I see how all of us feel a sense of brokenness at times. We all feel a mess. It’s good to know we aren’t alone. And to know that however we define the Divine, the Divine just wants to be alongside us and join us. I find this image very comforting and nourishing. Blessings to you, dear Jennifer. Lisa
Hi Lisa, I just clicked through to this post and it really resonated with me. Thank you. Sometimes, I dislike the mess. I wish for things to be mess free, beautiful and put together, all resolved. I was wishing for that again while reading your post, and then something shifted. I began to wonder, what would it be like to always be on the outside in? I imagined being like those already on the other side, who can look on at the world. There would be no more pain, loss, fear, mistakes. You wouldn’t have to do anymore shadow work, cry yourself to sleep, or even pay the bills or clean the kitchen for the zillionth time. And then I projected my scenerio into the future, on and on, because there would be no end to the watching. I was surprised to realize that, eventually, I’d long to be part of it. I’d wish to not just watch someone holding a new baby, but do the holding. I’d wish to know how objects felt in my hands, how it felt to run, or cry. It’s hard to keep going sometimes in this physical reality, maybe the people no longer present in it know the most just what a gift being here really is. I want to feel that way in my bones, rather than fight what is or long for a straightforward journey which won’t come. Loving the mess is the only way to accept it. Even the mess in myself. I’m not there yet, but the people I walk my journey with who are on the other side tell me, every day, that even the muddled and messy parts of us are beautiful to them.