Working Through the Mess

What a fitting title for my 100th writing via this blog -- Coming Out of the Closet -- Keeping it Real.  I often wonder what folks think when they first see that title.  Anyway, let's get to the sujet du jour 


Last week I was in my little kitchen, heating some really good, grainy bread -- bread which begged to be drizzled with grapeseed oil and spices.  (Just for the record, grapeseed oil has healthful benefits just as olive oil, but it tolerates higher heat for cooking and is not as heavy-hitting on the wallet.)  As I returned the bottle of oil to the shelf, there erupted an involuntary, violent, dry cough, the force of which caused me to lose my grip on the glass bottle which crashed to the floor and shattered.  In other words, I had my own personal oil-spill crises.  As I took action to clean up the kitchen's environment, two phones rang simultaneously, and my Blackberry vibrated, alerting me of an incoming message.

Working through the mess is -- well -- messy.  Sometimes we have to juggle.  Sometimes we have to just stop and deal with the mess.  Whether we choose to juggle the mess with other stuff or just deal with the mess, one thing is clear:  the mess must go.

Our little lives are fraught with ugly messes.  The longer they are left untended and unfinished, the larger and more burdensome they become, until they become part of the family.  In fact, they can change the family dynamic.  Or the business dynamic.  Or whatever in your life makes life worth living.  Messes are like diseases.  If left unchecked they wreak havoc.  So what mess have you left untended?  Why not clean it up today?


A note from the writer:
Many thanks to Erin Conaway, our Associate Pastor at South Main Baptist Church, whose sermon this past Sunday, taken from the first chapter of Isaiah, validated the weekend urgings of three people whom I admire and respect.  He ended the message with a challenge identical to that of my folks (many thanks to them as well), prompting me to see to a mess that I had left untended far, far too long.  And while I started this blog well before this past weekend, it took the prodding of my friends and a message from the Almighty via Erin, to finish it, for I could not do so until I had worked through  a mess.