Life Explodes

This past week I came to the conclusion that I’m clinically insane.  I mean it.  I’m truly crazy.  Those of you that know me won’t be surprised at this realization in the slightest.  For me, it’s been a dawning of understanding.  My “dawn”, though, was more like the ones you see in Warner Brother’s cartoons. 

You know the ones. 

You see a calm, bucolic, field with little bunnies hopping on their way to eat breakfast.  The sun rays peak out just beyond yonder hills. 

Then BAM! 

The giant, smiley-faced sun pops up.

My “WB” dawn came somewhere around mile three hundred, of a twelve hundred mile trip…with three small children.

Please don’t misunderstand me.  My kids are shockingly good, little travelers.  But if an adult were strapped in a seat next to another adult for twelve hundred miles, they would start biting, whining, and pelting each other with chicken McNuggets too.  After six years traveling as a “road dog” guitar player, I promise you..I’m not making that up.

So the problem isn’t my kids. 

It’s me, for thinking that this time would be that much different.

After all, the definition of insanity is: “Doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results.”  Despite my personal revelation of nuttiness, the trip went pretty well.

And then we got home.

Now, this part of the story requires me to go back to September 21, 1867. 

That was the day that Dr. Lister published his paper on the sterilization of operating rooms.  He was the guy who made antiseptics a part of medicine. 

He was also the inspiration for the cleanliness standard used in my mother’s kitchen. 

If you know my mom, you’re laughing right now because you know that her forks are nested together, perfectly, in her silverware drawer. 

My sister and I had lots of fun as kids and we made messes like everyone else, but the overall “stasis” of the house was orderly and clean.  Thus I came to associate peace and happiness with order and cleanliness. 

Fast forward to two months ago.  Laura and I were getting ready to head to Cape Cod for the summer and before we left, we spent three days cleaning our house. 

Steam-clean the carpets?  Check. 

Dust EVERYTHING?  Check. 

Measure to make sure everything is at perfect, right angles and comb the lawn?  Check and check. 

Why do we do this?  Because, when we get back after a twelve hundred mile trip….with three little kids….we want to walk into a clean and orderly house.  We want a peaceful home to return to.  And we did. 

For approximately 0.00000003 seconds.

Then life exploded in our house.

I started to unload our things, our boys ran to see their room, Alanna giggled and drooled on the carpet, and our neighbors brought in the pizza we had phoned in from the highway.  We were home and our home was a mess. 

As of Saturday, when I left for the airport, there was still “life shrapnel” dripping from the ceiling. 

And then it hit me. 

"Life" means "mess". 

I know that seems pretty obvious and I’ve known it intellectually for a long time, but I think I finally apprehended that truth.  You see our home, though it was blissfully clean, was vacant.  It was more of a tomb than a house.  It was void of life and so it was void of mess.  And then I had another “dawn” experience.

It struck me that that was how I was attempting to live my life as a follower of Jesus:  Nice, orderly, and clean.  But, God, in His infinite goodness, has never really allowed that.  To be honest, that has been the source of a lot of frustration toward God. Sure, there have been times of refreshment and rest but it's never been mess-free….because there was always me.  And I’m the biggest mess of all.  You see, I was attempting to order the world around me so I could avoid God’s attempt to disrupt the neat compartments I’d created on the inside.  But, just like my house, if there was going to be life, there was going to be mess.  The only way to avoid mess is to sterilize everything, to kill it off.  But that’s not what God desires for us. 

That is part of what it means, in the Bible, when it talks about people having hearts of stone instead of hearts of flesh.  

A stone heart can be polished to a brilliant shine and kept in a museum-quality box to keep it safe.  But it doesn’t beat, pump blood, move, or keep anything alive. 

Which is what a heart is supposed to do. 

A living heart is fragile, covered in blood and, let's face it, pretty yucky looking.  Not at all like what my Valentine’s Day cards look like.  But it’s alive.

Jesus never promised us an orderly and organized house, but he did come to bring us life…life that explodes.  And for that….I’ll take the mess.