Messy room
It started with a hairline crack near the door, just a split in the wallpaper, but underneath I felt loose plaster. When we moved into the house I had painted over three (yes, three) different patterns of wallpaper to brighten up the small room, but I wouldn’t get away with a quick lick of paint this time.
For a long time, I tried to ignore the grubby marks and the widening cracks on the wall. Recently I gathered my courage, borrowed a steamer from a friend and set to work. As I pulled off the stiff paper chunks of plaster came with it. The next day, I found a few of them hidden in my dog’s blankets. She decided that they were big enough to be worth gnawing on.
Now that the wallpaper’s off, we see the mottled, stained walls underneath. A big hole goes right down to the bricks and I still have to chip out more loose plaster around it. The place is a mess.
Messy life
Recently at Mass, I heard the passage in Jeremiah 18 where God compares Himself to a potter making something new out of a lump of clay that didn’t turn into anything worthwhile at the first attempt. The priest said that even if our lives are in a bad state, we can hand the mess over to God and trust Him to create something new. After Communion, I knelt down in prayer and thought about the messes in my life.
I thought about leaving the religious tradition in which I was brought up, which gave me certainty and security and the approval of my family. I thought of the anger I came to feel against religion, which caused me to oppose any kind of religious upbringing for my children. I thought of the force, which I might call God, which drew me into a mystery where there are no clear-cut certainties. This path eventually led me into the Catholic church.
I am in a place where I am like a little child, having to learn things again. It’s messy and painful. I feel that I have let my family down, both the older and younger generation, for different reasons. On that particular day, I was staying with my parents. I felt intense guilt for telling them that I was going out for a walk and a cup of coffee without also mentioning that the walk included a detour past the local Catholic church where I attended Mass.
Handing it over to God
Before I became Catholic, I asked our priest what difference taking Holy Communion would make. He looked me straight in the eye and said, “It will move you to tears.”
I couldn’t do any more with my mess and I tried to hand it over to God. This time, I couldn’t hold back the tears. I have often been damp-eyed after Communion, but I have never let go and cried with such abandon.
Nothing looks the way I (and I imagine many other people in my life) think it should. I don’t understand what is happening, but I think of the broken walls in room I am decorating. Once I took off the wallpaper, the walls looked an awful lot worse. Maybe things have to be stripped down to the core, revealing an even bigger mess, before anything can get better.
scotinprogress 