I Am Not a Beautiful Mess

Sometimes revelation comes through reiteration. Last Wednesday, I sat beside two middle school girls in youth group, writing some idle notes as Ross talked about Christmas and why Jesus came as baby. Stuff I've heard before. It's easy to become complacent about the gospel when you've heard it a million times.

Something about the way he described God's holiness and humanity's messiness produced a revelation in my mind. Up to that point, the insight had been percolating in my head, a vague silhouette that for years I have been trying to snatch and pin down: what human messiness means.

I’ve been trying to write about it, but it keeps slipping through the spaces between the laptop keys. I gave notice at my job so I could focus on my passion. My passion: writing. Focus: writing passionately. Writing like J.R.R. Tolkien, Louisa May Alcott, Charlotte Bronte. Writing that gets to the core of the human plight.

I think I haven’t been able to pinpoint that focus because worldly truth has been clashing with God’s truth. My writing—an attempt at raw, emotional, relatable messiness—is lacking because it is only fulfilling the worldly truth that messiness is beautiful.

You see it all the time in the media: Jason Mraz’s song “A Beautiful Mess,” Hunter Hayes’ “Storm Warning,” Brad Paisley’s “Old Alabama,” all with some version of a girl who is imperfect and therefore beautiful. Movies play up themes with protagonists who are broken and learn to embrace their brokenness, learn to see the beauty in their failings.

In the literary community especially is beautiful messiness embraced. (Memoirs are generally a reflection on a time in one’s life where everything was a mess and—in reflection—is beautiful.) Nothing messy is beyond the scope of beauty, therefore all messiness should be embraced because beauty is desirable. Society embraces messiness because it is relatable. When you read someone’s memoir and realize they do/say/think the same truly awful things as you do, you feel less guilty for your failings.

Where does this understanding of embracing messiness come from if not an innate desire for beauty and wholeness? Our original design is for a beautiful wholeness, and our messiness is nothing more than a reminder of how great God’s plan is to redeem His design. The only beautiful thing about our messiness is that God still wants a relationship with us, even though our messiness separates us—and that’s because of His grace, not because our messiness is somehow attractive.

Because secular society does not acknowledge that Jesus is the source of the desire for wholeness, all it can do is make an idol of its messiness. We have come to celebrate our messiness because it is “only human.” All sorts of messiness (which is just a euphemism for sin) is justified because it is only human, and humanity is messy.

I’m beginning to realize there is something terribly flawed with this wisdom. Messiness is nothing without grace. Our messiness can’t approach His holiness. His justice cannot let our sin go unpunished. So He decided to suffer to allow us access to His beautiful wholeness until He makes us fully whole in the New Earth. How incredible that the God of the universe would make Himself human and experience the messiness of the world so we might have a savior who is able to sympathize with our weakness! So I might be in relationship with Him and embrace His beautiful wholeness.

I am not a beautiful mess. I am a terrible, sinful, hurtful mess. And it is only by His grace that I can partake of His beautiful wholeness. While I await the promise of a restored body and soul, I must divert from the literary world's wisdom and write about His grace, because my messiness has no meaning apart from his wholeness.