Make More Messes

On Saturday, I lead a little brainstorming session for a couple moms and their 4th grade daughters. We made prayer collages, read a passage in 1 Samuel, talked about connecting with God, brainstormed some ideas for a new girls group starting in February, then prayed together.

At the end, I snapped a photo of our table, and when I looked at it, I thought, “The messes at the end always make the best pictures.”

This summer, I spent several of my Saturdays making messes with two-and- three-year-olds in parks across Chicago. I remember one of those Saturdays, sitting in the grass with my girl, Ellie, and a can full of shaving cream. We’d just finished painting and playing in a lavender sensory bin when I sprayed the shaving cream into an aluminum pan and handed Ellie a popsicle stick. 

“Wanna stir it?” I asked.

She tentatively poked at the white fluff while I dropped a few drops of tempera paint into the mix. She looked at it, not really knowing what to do. “Look,” I said, “You can swirl it!” Then I picked up my own stick and started to mix. She got so excited and started stir stir stirring!

I’ll never forget what happened later, when we made a new pan of shaving cream…

Ellie got brave enough to try mixing it with her hands. She mushed and squished and marveled at the sounds it made and the way it felt. Then, with two hands full of shaving cream, she looked up at me. We made eye contact as she slowly moved her messy right hand towards her clean left arm. She paused, hand hovering over arm. She looked at me, then at her arm, then back at me.

“Yeah. You can do it!” I said.

And then smash! She covered her whole arm in shaving cream, and it was a delight. 

After that, it was off to the races. Shaving cream on her legs, shaving cream on her shirt, shaving cream on her feet. Shaving cream was everywhere until Ellie was ready to be done.

I cleaned her off with a few paper towels then she had the brilliant idea to take the shaving cream over to our painting station and use it to paint a toy car we had been playing with — an idea I never would have thought of.

This is why I’ve grown to love art — because messes are celebrated there, because creativity has no limits and the more comfortable we become inside the mess, the more beautiful things we are able to create. 

I need that as an adult. Adults don’t get a lot of spaces to be messy, but we need them. We need permission to not be perfect, we need permission to mess up, we need permission to try something and fail, and make new discoveries along the way.

I need to make space in my life for mess— and not just the creative messes, but the mess that is being a broken human. The mess that is anger and bitterness over hurts that just can’t seem to be healed; the mess that is the fight for forgiveness because forgiveness sets us free; the mess that is bargaining with God and asking him why certain things are the way they are; the mess that is loving other messy people; the mess that is my house because life is just to full; and the mess of just being a mess. 

I need to make messes, and I don’t need to be afraid of messes — mine or other peoples. And I need to make space for the kids in my life to make messes too. Messes produce flexibility. Messes teach us how to fun. Messes help us solve problems and get creative grow.

So...I’m feeling like I need to make an action step here: why not make a mess today? Or at some point this week. Lay a blanket on the floor and fill your own aluminum pan with shaving cream, and get your hands a little dirty. Pull out some paint and throw it on a canvas. Or oil pastels! Those have become my new favorite. They’re fun to smudge on the page, and they’re way more affordable than they sound. Or why not bake and let the flour float in the air. These are some pretty risk-free ways to make a mess. So make a mess today!