Life is one big beautiful mess.  We are all a mess in one way or another.  Admit it, you know it well.  It’s letting your kids walk out the door with mismatched socks because you can’t find one matching pair in the nineteen laundry baskets of clean clothes.  Which, by the way, have been waiting to be put away for over a week.  (Never mind the fact that as I write this I ignored the dog and he ended up eating the last 2 remaining slices of apple pie.  Not great for his diet but I’m on day 2 of Whole 30.  Thanks for the assist Wegman!)

Back to the mess.  How about a morning that you forget to put the coffee in the coffee maker before hitting brew?  I did that today.  Even the best Ninja coffee maker won’t make coffee grounds magically appear.  How about putting yourself in “time-out” because your husband has been away for 2 days and you can no longer stand to hear the YouTube videos your kids are watching of other kids playing video games?  Did I mention that “time-out” is locking yourself in the bathroom with a couple of mini Snickers bars and Pinterest on your phone?  Yeah…that happened….before the whole Whole 30 lifestyle change.

If you can relate to any of these, then you my friend might just be a “hot mess”.  You might consider joining my unofficial club lovingly dubbed by some awesome co-workers as “The Hot Mess Express”. It’s a judgement free zone because at the end of the day we’ve all got “stuff” to deal with.  It’s can be fun, hard, sad and messy but when the sun has set and the chaos turns to quiet a beautiful mess can be found in this crazy thing we call life.

Life isn’t always perfect and it isn’t always fair,  but it’s something to embrace.  To me embracing life is being thankful for what you have and sometimes for what you don’t have.  To be grateful for the goodness life can bring.  To be humble when life is good…and to be humble when life is maybe not so good.  To be kind to yourself, your friends, your neighbors, your community and to the world.

If you’ve made it this far and feel like you can relate, then I invite you to stick with me and embrace the mess.  I won’t promise this to be the most awesome blog you’ll ever read but you might get a few laughs from time to time.    You’ll share in my walk through life in my faith, as a wife, as a parent, and as a friend.  Most of all you’ll share in my life as a person living in this world, just like you, and trying to bring a glimmer of hope and happiness into the everyday and ordinary of life.

“Seek peace and pursue it.” Psalm 34:14