messy heart

We are in the midst of potty training.  yikes.  This isn't as easy as my bootcamp pdf told me it would be.  I think I need to invest in some more big boy underwear, another thing of detergent, and a steam cleaning of my couch.  oh, and a heavy dose of patience.

I'm telling you this so that I can set the stage for the rest of this post.  I'm tired.....potty training is tiring.  and while there are worse problems in the world that I could be facing, it is what it is.  So, take this tired potty training mama who is also planning her son's 2nd birthday party, and throw in a haircut gone bad and you've got a nice recipe for "breakdown".

John was post-call, so he got off early and we celebrated by getting haircuts for the two of them.  We have a Great Clips coupon?  oh yes. then that's there we'll be going.  The instructions I gave the hairdresser were as follows:

"I'm not ready for his "boy cut" yet.  We just need a very small trim.  I don't want the bangs cut very much at all.  Just a small trim in the back".  I even added emphasis.

So she started snipping.  and cutting.  and snipping some more.  Can you see where this is going?  I finally got up enough gumption to say something.

"Um...it seems like you are cutting more than I wanted.  I really don't want much cut off."

She acted as if I hadn't said anything.  Not that it mattered much anyway, because the damage was already done.  When she finally finished she said:

"Well, I had to cut off some to round it out."

blood boiling.  hot body all over.  We waited for John to finish his cut while i rehearsed the entire thing in my head and what i might say to her if I had the courage....but mostly I just wanted to get the heck out of dodge.

Before

After

At first I was angry. and then I started to cry.  that was about 4:15 pm.

After putting Beckham to bed, I took a drive to the cemetery by our house---perfect spot to go and weep in your car and not worry about anyone staring at you.  This was my view.

I did not even have words for what I was feeling.  Mostly I just cried.  I was angry about the haircut, but I knew my emotions were about so much more than that, something much deeper.  I finally just said out loud to God, "I feel like a mess." Then I looked to my left and saw this:

Bam.  I was looking at a picture of my heart.  A tangled up mess.

I suddenly remembered a prayer that I prayed a few weeks ago as Lent was beginning.  "Lord, show me my sin.  Show me the darkness of my heart."  Often times, I can convince myself that my heart is "pretty good" and is "pretty much in order" and that I can "pretty much take credit for that".  Deep down, I know it's not the truth, but I act like it is.

I was feeling the heaviness of my mess.  my anger.  my pain.  my sin.  And then I remembered this scripture (John 1: 45-46):

Philip found Nathanael and told him, “We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote—Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.”

“Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?” Nathanael asked.

“Come and see,” said Philip.

If Jesus, the Messiah, can come out of Nazareth, an unfavorable city, I'm pretty sure He can bring good out of my messy heart.

After I recalled that scripture, I looked behind me and saw this.