a perfectly put together mess
I've spent my whole adult life cleaning up messes, organizing messes, staying perfectly scheduled to prevent messes, and obsessing over messes. I don't mean wiping up a glass of spilled orange juice or cleaning the remains of a messy art project that I have to scrape off with my fingernail and destroy yet another Magic Eraser in order to remove every last bit of crusty paint off the craft table. Of course, with three children, two future stepchildren, and a whole lot of playdates I have had my fair share of those types of messes to tackle, but those aren't the messes that inspired me to start this blog. The messes that have been in my mind and on my heart for a long time now are the LIFE messes.
The sudden loss of a family member, a friendship that went south far too quickly, the new-ish car completely dying after only two years of owning it, how to arrange the family room furniture so everyone can see the TV, the broken dryer when we have seven hampers full of dirty laundry, the flight that was canceled and stranded three young daughters and me in a foreign country, how to decorate the dining table for out-of-town company who have never visited our home before, the dissolution of a marriage.
THOSE kind of messes are the real life messes. The messes you probably won't see on Facebook or Instagram. The messes that we all have and we all, for the most part, try to hide. Why? Why aren't we just "real"? What is the shame in "real" life? Recently, Allan (my biggest fan, my Ride or Die, my fabulous fiance) told me that I am too much of an open book and I need to be more careful with who I trust with my personal messes and with my honest heart and feelings.
This made me so very sad.
Shouldn't we all give each other grace? We are all human, we all have our strengths and weaknesses. We all lose our tempers or say things we don't mean or reveal too much of our mess sometimes. Sometimes we reveal other people's messes, and that can get really messy. I love the phrase "it's not my story to tell" and I'm trying so hard to practice that more and more.
In these blog posts I will reveal some of the messes I have had to navigate or am currently navigating. Some of the messes may be quite comical, like the time my youngest rubbed a whole jar of Vaseline in her hair and it took me quite some time and effort to figure out how to remove that greasy nastiness. Some of the messes may have led to God's greatest blessings, like the loss of five babies just to be blessed with my three perfectly and wonderfully made girls.
I'm also going to give interior design tips to, hopefully, help you make your own mess beautiful. I'll open up about the string of messes that pushed me into the field of interior design and gave me the burning desire to help others create spaces where they love to live.
I hope this blog will encourage you, inspire you, educate you or, in the very least, just give you a safe place to go when you need to escape your own perfectly put together mess.
--Chrissy