Today I saw an Instagram meme from Share and Inspire that just made my day!!! It spoke of one of those UNspoken truths that everyone resists in spite of the TRUTH of it.

Life is messy. And it is wonderful, so we need to get over the desire to make everything neat and tidy. It just frustrates us. Something I learned about myself years ago surprised me. I am a closet perfectionist. It is so nice to walk into a neat room, see a tidy closet, or well-organized drawers. However, I have five children. We lived in the country and had five dogs, sometimes more, sometimes less. The same could be said for the children because they always seemed to have friends over. It was entirely normal to have 8-10 for dinner night after night. It was necessary to give up trying for perfection in any way. To save my sanity, it was best to let that idea go.

Was my house neat, tidy, clean or even slightly picked up? No. I made sure that everything on those floors, rugs, carpets, and even painted canvas had to have at least some shades of Virginia clay color in the design. Because clay was part of my life. Children played in it. Dogs rolled in it, horses ditto. It got tracked in on shoes, boots, paws and blown in by the wind.

And that is not all.

Marriage is messy; lovemaking is messy; having a baby is messy; cooking is messy; being a child is messy; raising a family is one big mess. Would I have traded any of it for a neat life? No. I loved every minute that I was not cleaning up, and even then, I was pretty happy most of the time.
Relationships are messy, but that does not mean we shouldn’t have them. Divorce is messy, but it does not have to be mean. And when the dust settles you may find you are still friends with each other.

Sibling relationships are often messy. Sometimes they are close and comfortable, and then sometimes they devolve into enmity. Friendships are messy and yet who would give them up?

We should never regret anything in life. If it is good, it is lovely, if it is terrible it is ‘experience’. How do we become better people? Through bad experiences, that is how.

Copyright?. 2019 Bonnie B. Matheson