I'm a mess...I really am!

And so is my plate of food. Just the other day, I shared with you about my terribly annoying habit of eating so slowly. And now, here’s a perspective from a dear friend who was, in fact, with hubby and me during a meal at a restaurant.

I have to tell you her application will touch your heart…here it is.

Recently, while eating dinner with Janet (who happens to be blind), the Lord gave me some insight into our sometimes-tangled up lives.

Janet ordered salmon, a sweet potato, and a salad. When dinner arrived, Janet’s husband removed the skin from her sweet potato, and then dumped the “meat” of it back onto the plate. He then proceeded to also dump her tossed salad on top of both the sweet potato and her salmon, which left her with a big pile of food.

At this point, and over the course of our meal, Janet began employing what I call the tap-push method of eating. She would tap through the various food items, cutting them into smaller pieces, and then push them together. Eventually, it became one big, jumbled mess…and she ate every bit of it!

A sighted person might not think it very appetizing to eat food that way, but to Janet, it was the best!

It reminded me of our lives. We all wish them to be picture perfect with everything in its place. Neat. Not messy…and with all our ducks in a row.

But then something unexpected happens (tap-push) and the perfection of our lives begins to diminish.

Loss of a job (tap-push) and our lives continue to slowly unravel.

The child’s teacher sends home a note that Junior hasn’t been turning in homework (tap-push) and things begin to get a bit messy.

Your meager 401k is in the stock market and it drops 100, 200, 400 points, heading south and taking with it your hope for retirement one day (tap-push). Life gets even messier.

Diabetes, high blood pressure, or some other affliction is diagnosed and you begin to wonder how long of a future you have on this earth (tap-push). Messy doesn’t even begin to describe your existence or how you feel about what you’ve been handed to deal with.

Our serving plates of life now contain one giant mess where it’s hard to distinguish exactly what went wrong.

Have you been there? Over time, life has tapped and pushed all of its circumstances together until everything is one giant, jumbled mess!

But there’s good news. Even though things look like a mess, all the components needed for a life of peace and joy are still there – just like Janet’s plate of food. She still had her salad, her salmon, and her sweet potato – it was just mixed together – and good nutrition was still provided.

As life happens and circumstances get tapped and pushed into place in our own lives, God can and will use everything, though jumbled up, for our good, if we are part of His family.

“He [God] knows us far better than we know ourselves…That's why we can be so sure that every detail in our lives of love for God is worked into something good” (Romans 8:28 The Message).

We may not always like the taste of what we’re experiencing, but good spiritual nutrition is mixed in and God’s hand is what blends it all together.

You or I might look at Janet’s plate and not want to eat it. Thankfully, God is not only aware that our lives are sometimes messy, but He also knows to ensure the mess works out for our benefit!

So be encouraged, Dear One, when those taps and pushes come your way they’re reminders of God’s presence and provision in your life.

Note from Janet: Aha! Now I know what others see when they peek at my messy plate. But I’m more encouraged knowing that often the messes in my life will have a sweet flavor when shuffled by the fork in God’s mighty hand.

Janet