The Messy Bits

Things are what they are. Our lives have their twists and turns. I'm handling it ok at the moment. I just decided to take Sadie to see a movie and then shopping. And one line in the movie made it worth seeing.

The plot -- a woman, a widow, is searching for a man she loved fifty years before. They are driving around Italy looking for every man by that name to try and find him. At one part they drive up to this huge mansion and her grandson says, "Wow, Gram. You could have all this after skipping all the messy bits." To which she responds, "Life is the messy bits."

This morning in church I was in tears as we sang this song, especially the line in bold:

When God restored our common life, our hope, our liberty,
at first it seemed a passing dream, a waking fantasy.
A shock of joy swept over us, for we had wept so long;
the seeds we watered once with tears sprang up into a song.

We went forth weeping, sowing seeds in hard, unyielding soil;
with laughing hearts we carry home the fruit of all our toil.
We praise the One who gave the growth,with voices full and strong.
The seeds we watered once with tears sprang up into a song.

Great liberating God, we pray for all who are oppressed.
May those who long for what is right with justice now be blest.
We pray for those who mourn this day, and all who suffer wrong;
may seeds they water now with tears spring up into a song.

Sometimes this seems like it's all we do. We sew seed in hard, tough, soil, soil that is hardened by a mental illness early trauma of our kids. And it gets so hard to hang in there. It seems like nothing we are doing works at yet, we go forth, weeping at times, plugging away. It's so hard some days.

But as the older woman said in the movie, "Life is the messy bits." And so I'm planning to continue to plug away at the messy bits, sewing my seeds, with the hope that some day the seeds we watered with tears will spring up into a song.