The Nitty Gritty: Growth is a process, and the messy middle is where the good work happens. Don’t rush it, friend. Lean in. Growth sprouts in the messy middle, and on the other side of it, we bloom.
Travis and I have been refinishing the hardwood in our home this summer. It’s been a long process of moving furniture and sanding and vacuuming and scraping and sanding again and curing and waiting and maneuvering narrow pathways in the hallway.
I knew what I was getting into from the first moment he peeled back the carpet in the closet, revealing hardwood underneath. He cast vision for refinished floors and walked me through the steps of what this project would entail. He warned me this would be a slow and messy process, but I was hooked. I saw myself in the vision with him.
That was a couple months ago. We’ve completed our master bedroom and are just beginning work in our guest room. I’m still in the vision with him, but I must attest to his honesty. Just as he predicted, it has been a slow and messy process.
He warned me, and I know the end-results will be worth it, I must also admit this is not my favorite season.
I Want to Rush Through the Mess
I cling to the hope of efficiency and fast results. The project consumes me and my calendar, and I’ll squeeze our budget to get it done more quickly. I’m willing to exhaust myself to just get it done as fast as possible if that means I can finish and move on.
I don’t want to sit in the process any longer than necessary. I prefer to move with haste to get it over with. But do you see the red flags? There’s no rest for the weary when our goal is to hustle through. We assume there’s nothing good to be discovered in the mess when we move through it without patience.
It occurred to me, at some point as I stood in the craziness that is the current state of our home, that maybe the reason this slow process challenges me is because of the prolonged mess.
I can’t say I’ve ever really loved a mess. Everything is out of sorts. There’s barely any order. Mess means that I have lost control over the process. I’ve never loved being in that place.
It’s a hard place to be, the Messy Middle
I came home one evening several weeks into the big hardwood project and felt my frustration rising within me as I maneuvered past the tools stacked in our already narrow hallway, where two rooms worth of furniture stood crammed in our guest room and spilled out into the hallway. I’d been working
overtime and my emotions were raw. Tears fell. I loathed the mess and hated the process.
My complaints raged within my heart, far from gratitude or patience. I want this to be over. I want our home to feel normal again. I want our hallway back. I’m sick. Of. This. Mess.
And then I saw him. He was on his hands and knees, scraping and sanding at the floor – doing the very project we’d set out to do together. Sweat dripped from his nose. He paused his work, looked up at me and said so lovingly, “Hey, Bri. Check it out.”
He motioned to the grain of the wood. He pointed out the spots that were given him trouble, as well as the spots that he was proud of.
I stood bitter in the mess, but he accepted it. I wished away the process in my mind, but he stayed faithful to it. He leaned into the messiness of it all, willing to take it slow because he knew that would yield the most beautiful results.
Growth Sprouts in the Mess
I want the before and after photos without the process of what comes in between. But the truth is that slow and messy is required.
The equally important truth is that everyone is in it. No one’s journey is perfected overnight. It takes time. The photos you pin to mood boards and gawk over in magazines required some tender loving care to become what they are. The life you dream of will require messy work.
It’s here, in these days of participating in the process within the mess, that something is shaped within us. Contentment for today’s allotted portion and grace for our mistakes along the way grow in our hearts. The mess increases our trust that we’ll see the product of our labor come to fruition form and highlights the visible reminder that we don’t quite have it together.
Growth sprouts most freely in the mess.
The Mess Turned Miracle
Maybe, as our eyes scan the chaos around us, our hope is pulled upward to the One who helps us navigate. What if the mess allows us to exchange our impressiveness for humility? Perhaps the answer is the gift that we were never in control in the first place.
God can work with that.
And maybe our participation in the process begins with getting low and patient enough to sit with the mess. God does not need our humility to work it out. He needs nothing from us. However, our great privilege of witnessing his work and redemption begins when we stoop low enough to watch it.
If we can choose to sit low and long enough in the mess to see the process through, we might just get to see a miracle.
I see now that Travis walks with peace through the mess because he knows it’s a part of the process – a beautiful part of the process. Without haste or impatience, he shows up to do the task at hand. He accepts that it’s not pretty yet, but it will be.
One messy step after another, until we look back and realize the mess was shaping us into something glorious all along.