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I love messy.

But messy is quite difficult for me. So let’s start from the beginning.

My heart has always burned for justice, ethics and sustainability. As a small child I clearly saw my life story taking me on a journey of shalom, that is, a peace that encompasses wholistic justice and restoration. From elementary school I walked out this path, but in adolescence I found myself on an alternative route that has taken years from which to reorient myself.

Some might call it excellence. But now I know it as striving.

I’m not sure I ever received less than a 3.8 grade point average, and that may just as well be my downfall. Neither grades nor excellence nor learning where the problems, but the well disguised coping mechanisms of performance tricked me into thinking that if I could meet the highest standards enough, then I would be valued enough.

I’ve always been good at whatever task I set myself to. I adapt and I succeed. I do things well and I don’t do things messy… well, I didn’t used to.

As my high school years turned into college I followed the road that I believed was most reasonable and would lead to the most amount of success for me in my journey to evoke shalom on earth. I went to college for Physics to build sustainable energy sources. And I spent all of my time focusing on how I could become more sustainable in practice. My whole world revolved around doing ethics perfect. Justice perfect. Sustainability perfect.

I ate vegan. Actually, I didn’t just eat vegan, I ate New Age, superfood, vegan.

I tried to shower as little as possible so as to not waste water. I didn’t wet my toothbrush when brushing my teeth.

Everything was calculated. Everything was controlled. Everything was perfect.

Or so I thought.

Other than the fact that I was dying inside.

I had seen counselors regularly since I was 14. I had taken antidepressants through out high school (feeling oh so guilty for consuming something so untraceable and un-transparently produced). And now in college I couldn’t hold it together any longer. Then, to top it off, I was hit hard with death, divorce and the reality that I was unaware of what I wanted to do with my life other than what I felt was the most ethical, sustainable and just thing to do. So I moved 11,000 miles away.

In New Zealand I encountered a lifestyle that was unlike what I had known. It felt more like home than anything ever. For the first time I realized that I didn’t have to live the life of performance and to let fear and controle be my motivation in seeking justice, ethics and sustainability. But I was 19 and I wasn’t really sure what was going on, or how to put words to it. I wanted to live in New Zealand forever, but somehow life has a way of not standing still. So I soon found myself 20 years old and back in California, possibly more confused than ever.

My world had been turned upside down and inside out and set out to dry. I was depressed. I was confused and angry and lost. I was inspired. And now I found myself back in daily life trying to make since of it all.

I was concerned about balancing ethics, justice and sustainability, but I wasn’t able to find a job that seemed to fit the description. So with much anxiety I worked at the mall and stressed about buying Styrofoam Jamba Juice if I forgot my lunch, and cried about the lack of options I had when it came to purchasing ethical and sustainable work clothes upon getting hired at Starbucks.

I started to enjoy life a little more, and worry about perfection a little less. Yet I was still overwhelmed with the decision of wether or not to eat meat while training for my first marathon. Trying to live with zero waste, while finishing college with a 4.0, and still working to promote social action, left me to feel my insufficiencies more than before.

Something was happening in me, but it took many more years to unravel. I had yet to truly come undone. Ultimately, I had yet to let the Lord take me on the journey to be loved. I guess I wasn’t ready and I was too busy striving for ethical, sustainable and just perfection. Distracted by the expectations I had placed upon myself, I never realized what was really happening…. that the Lord was speaking identity over me so that I could ultimately live shalom along side Him… broken, messy, human, and loved.

So my 20s where filled with the Lord giving me opportunity to be messy and to miss my expectations, only so that He could show me that I am loved and that I am His and that I can never accomplish shalom aside from His saving Grace. My striving for perfection was what I though would help me bring shalom onto this earth, but this striving and perfection is actually what kept God from bringing Shalom through me.

He allowed me to be messy not because I failed and not because I succeeded, but because I’m learning, pressing into new realities, and expanding my positive impact on my community. And, for some reason, this type of messy permitting love has become the safest dogma that I’ve known. A world view and a value system based on the concept that I am enough and that nothing I do or do not do will change my intrinsic value. That my greatest accomplishments will not be achieved out of a lacking, but beautifully messy love.

This beautiful messy love become especially apparent to me later into my 20s when I had kids. When I finally was undone like never before. I thank my kids and my husband for this life lesson. Before they came along I thought I was living life quite well… That I was on track to lead others into shalom and that I was only going to become more respectable in the ways I practiced ethics. Ha!

The conflict to live ethically and sustainability and justly became ever more dire having my first daughter. Life no longer looked so simple. Justice and ethics and sustainability where no longer about the best option of self depravity that reduced my negative impact on the world. It was messy. I was conflicted. To be honest, my whole life style and value system was shaken to the ground. For the first time ever, I had to figure for myself what where the compromises that would allow me to love my kids in the best way that I knew how. For the first time, I elevated my value for how my actions impacted the receiving end of consumption over the many places and people and systems involved in production. Self depravity and loving sustainability more than loving my house hold was no longer the best solution to living ethically and sustainably and justly. It was messy.

I suddenly found myself encountering all sorts of trauma (experiences beyond my ability to cope) that lead me to bounce all around the colors of spiral dynamics. I didn’t know how to problem solve or how to assess losses. I went back and forth between giving up on intentionl consumption, to neglecting myself, my family and my finances, among other things. I began to recognize that on an personal level I was not living sustainably, and that if I could not learn to live real life sustainably, then I would never be able to communicate to others how to live ethicaly, sustainably or justly. Something had to give.

So messy came into my life in a new way. I was no longer in control. My own defenses had to come down. And all of the boxes of healing where open, all at once. Surrender became my only method to press in. And pressing in was my only way out of the confusion.

But the sweetness of the Lord came like refreshing wind. My husband and I where both a mess in our own ways during this season of unraveling. Our unraveling took us far beyond the stress of life-style choices, and into the deeper, darker spaces from which those stresses originated. We both yelled out WHY?…. Why had we been so hurt in life to lead us to a place of such insufficiencies and confusion? Why was it so hard to pursue the things on our hearts? Why did we feel such neglect and disappointment through out our lives?

It was then that our journey took us to a place of begging the Lord to redefine our stories, our values and our purpose. To realign our efforts with what is good in a way that we can maintain. My husband felt very angry, I feat very defeated.

Opportunities came up for us to leave the questions unanswered… For me to attend grad school to learn how to impact ethics and sustainability and justice on a global scale. But I knew it wasn’t the right time. I knew that my deepest desire was to be validated in my efforts to do good, so that I might derive some self value from the glory. I knew that as much as I have gifting and passion to lead systems into shalom, not dealing with my internal mess would mean that my efforts would always be tainted by an alternative motive to earn relivance and value. Somehow, it became aparent to me that living ethically and justly and sustainably was not just about calling down the Kingdom of God, but was about me proving to myself and to others that I was enough.

Then, somehow, not having clarity about the sustainability of storing cloth diapers in a plastic diaper bin brought me to my knees in a way that no existential literature could recover. I was undone, married to an undone man, with a one month old.

Messy.

I couldn’t fix it. I couldn’t fix myself. I couldn’t fix my husband. So I mostly just held my precious baby and cried. We cried together most nights. And such peace came into our house that I had never before known. A peace that showed me my childhood and my narrative of brokenness, and gave me vision for the child in my hands. All at once I became a daughter of the King and a mother of a beautiful girl. It was like spiritual healing on excelleration.

Striving was no longer the tool needed to carry me into the next season. I cried out for a new word to mark this new life, and the Lord told me SURRENDER.

The Lord is real and the Lord is good. As I took that word to heart in the way that I knew how, I decided that I would exegesis the hell out of ‘surrender’ and achieve this new reality. But little did I know that the door into the narrative the Lord has been writing with my life is not for me to strive to achieve it, but to just breath and to be me. The Hebrew word for ‘surrender’ is ‘magan.’ My name. It has been proclaimed over me from birth. I am surrender. I am good. The things in my heart are from the Lord, but there is nothing I have to strive to do to achieve them…. I just have to be me, to be ‘magan.’

Something big happened for me the day that the sun rose with the Lord’s proclamation “surrender,” and set with me striving to achieve “surrender” only to find myself…. only to find who I was created to be. This is nothing I have ever experienced before. Immediately my whole story was re-written.

As I now look weeks away from turning 30, I look back at these last 4 years since the Lord spoke my identity over me. I look back at the last 8 years since my realities came undone. Back at the last 15 years of striving, only to come to the reality that all along the most affective bearer of shalom is myself…. who I was created to be. I was created to carry the message of shalom and there is nothing I can do or not do that can alter the trajectory of the YES that I have offered and continue to offer, even amidst my brokenness. That YES to the Lord is of more value than any degree, any amount of failures or successes. The YES to the Lord is what fills me with life and answers all of my existential queries. The YES to the Lord is my peace and is the victory to which I resign myself. And, yes, that same YES is the yes that brings shalom into my life and into this world.