E18 Reframing Your Perspective When Life Gets Messy

SHOW TRANSCRIPT:

Jen Cudmore (00:01)
Hey there, everyone. Welcome back to Into the Depths podcast. I did end up taking a little bit of time away. My dad had ⁓ passed away recently, and so I just took a little bit of a break. ⁓ I’m not at my best self today, much better than I was. So just please forgive me if I fumble my words a little bit. I’ve had a lot of brain fog lately. ⁓

I decided I’m going to show up right now today, even though I’m not at my best self because ⁓ this message, this episode is all about how life is messy. And, ⁓ you know, I mean, this is the first time I’ve put on makeup in about a week and that’s okay. Like ⁓ I’m learning to sit in that tension of

Life isn’t meant to be perfect. And so that’s kind of where I want to go today is just some of the ways that God has been challenging me in ⁓ how life is messy. And sometimes you just can’t be your best self because of different situations. So I don’t know about you, but I personally don’t like messes. ⁓ I’m not a clean freak, but I definitely don’t ⁓ like having to clean up things and put things away.

I have a tendency to try to make life neat and tidy. And I think a lot of people are like this and God just keeps reminding me that life was never meant to be neat and tidy. And so, so that’s kind of where I want to go. So let me open up with these questions. ⁓

Where are you trying to make life neat and tidy? And where can you maybe let go a little bit and be okay with the mess? I really struggle with being okay with the mess and I’m gonna talk about some different areas of life, but my question to you to get us started is where is your life messy and where is that okay and what needs to be tidied up and finding that balance?

The other day I was reading a book. I was rereading a book that God had had me read about four years ago and it’s about cultivating an intentional life. But one of the things that she talks about in there is how we as a culture have a tendency to we focus a lot on appearance and how things look. And I know the scripture talks about how God doesn’t focus on appearance. He looks at our hearts. But we have really got come to a ⁓

sort of a consensus, especially in the West, of we like things to look ⁓ sort of polished and perfect, if you will. And the example that I was reading in my book is how when we go to the grocery store and we’re looking through the produce, our eyes are immediately drawn to the fruit that looks nice. For example, I mean, I’ve been told this is why they started putting a wax coating on apples is because they want them to look shiny because shiny is appealing and people will buy more.

because they look appealing. so that is, I mean, that’s a great example. I definitely, for me, when I’m looking for produce, I’m looking for the ones that look right. And that’s not the best way to shop because just because they look great on the outside doesn’t mean they have good flavor. So ⁓ just pausing for a moment to think about where in my life am I trying to make things look great and look shiny and look neat and tidy.

when that’s not really the way it was supposed to be. That’s not really the way it was meant to be. And our focus of going that, looking at life that way is not actually the best way of looking at life. In fact, that can do us harm. So.

Lately God has been reminding me that life is supposed to be messy and I don’t like it. I Actually heard this term a while ago about life being messy I mean this is rather I don’t know like ten years ago and it actually kind of irritated me and I’d silly but Just I thought life isn’t messy. I mean, that’s just stupid life life is just life. It’s complicated. It is what it is

But now I’m just sort of I guess maybe in my older age and my maturity realizing that ⁓ Yeah, the reality is life can be very messy but that that that’s fine. That’s actually good for us Me, you know still trying to control things hold on to things make everything fit in a nice box with a pretty bow ⁓

We, I think we all have a tendency to do that. You know, I like everything in its proper order. I want things to be sequential. I like clear steps. One, two, three here. Boom, you’re done. And that is just not reality. And so over the years, I’ve really struggled with that in different ways, but I’m seeing it differently now. ⁓ Really since my dad got sick and passed away a couple of weeks ago,

it’s really become a huge reality to me because the death of a loved one creates a lot of chaos in your life, in your family. And, ⁓ you know, I like order, I like routine. And so not being able to do life the way I want to over the last few weeks or the way that I’m used to, the way that’s comfortable for me has been a challenge. Grief.

complicates things. It’s unpredictable. It’s not linear. You have crazy emotions. You have brain fog. You fumble over your words. ⁓ It’s hard to show up to anything and be your best self. So ⁓ I remember one evening, this was a couple nights after my dad had passed away and Tim and I went out to dinner and I usually carry a set of reading glasses in my purse. He ⁓

sometimes has trouble reading the menus and so I Have been I’ve been doing that for I don’t a while now for him And so I could tell he was kind of squinting at the menu and I said hey babe Do you need me to get the scissors out of my purse and he looked at me and I was like Why does he have this funny look on his face and he said what are you trying to do to me? And when he asked that question, I realized okay. I had said the word scissors instead of glasses

And so, you we got a really good chuckle out of it. He likes to tease me and I have fumbled over my words a lot lately. I mean, that was just a funny example of, I meant, do you need your glasses, you know, so you can read the menu better. so, ⁓ you know, learning to look at life and the way it’s messy, it doesn’t have to be bad. Like we don’t have to define messy as bad.

you know, there can be joy found in that. Like we can laugh at ourselves when we make mistakes and life looks a little bit untidy. So I’ve been sort of picturing or pondering rather like what, you know, in all areas of life, what does messy look like? And so just kind of reflecting on some of my own ⁓ situations. ⁓

God gave me this picture of what it looks like to dump out a huge bucket of Legos in the middle of the carpet. I mean, most of us, if we have kids, we have had Legos in our lives. And most of the time lately, like, I don’t know, after the past 10 or 20 years, Legos are typically come in kits or boxes where they give you a specific project to build, like with Star Wars themes or whatnot. And so God was showing me sort of like

we like to look at life as these little kits of Legos. Like this is a starship, whatever. So we’re going to build this with this box of Legos. But this box of Legos has all the pieces for this type of ⁓ item. And really life is more like a box of thousands of Legos just dumped in the middle of the carpet and we have to make sense of it. And I thought that was such a great picture.

for how to move forward. It’s not neat and tidy. There are things that we’re gonna have to sort through and organize ourselves and it’s supposed to be that way. So we need to stop fighting to try to make life neat and tidy. So here are a couple of examples of my own life. I was thinking about how work can be complicated and messy. Think ⁓ especially when you’re short staffed.

Like I’ve got an employee going out next week, she’ll be gone. Not a big deal. mean, everybody needs time off now and then, but what that means for me is that I have to stay late into the evenings for coverage, which means that complicates how I’m going to do dinner. ⁓ You know, it’s, can’t go hang out in the kitchen for 30 to 60 minutes cooking up a meal because I need to be available for the clinic.

⁓ And the tricky part just to be clear is because I work remote. I’m on the East Coast. The clinic is in Alaska. And so they are four hours behind, which means if they’re open till five, I need to be available till 9 p.m. Eastern. And that’s fine. Like ⁓ we’ve worked that out. It works. It works well for the agreement that I have with the clinic. But ⁓

So it’s not a big deal. It just means I have to plan ahead and I need to recognize that next week’s gonna be a little complicated and I need to choose meals that are really simple and try to get help from my husband on the nights that he is home ⁓ so that I can focus on that. I like to work in block times or ⁓ basically I like to do projects.

certain types of projects all at the same time because it keeps your brain, it’s easier for your brain to stay focused on one type of task, doing it over and over than to keep switching tasks every few minutes. And so I’ve learned that I can be more productive when I’m blocking tasks, but there are times when I have to have my phone turned on, which means I’m gonna be interrupted from time to time, which means it’s gonna slow me down on the certain types of tasks that I’m doing.

And so that gets messy. And for me, that can sometimes be frustrating. I don’t want to take a call from a staff person or a, ⁓ you know, a patient when I’m in the middle of working on a project or a report or whatever. And so, ⁓ you know, this is what it looks like. This is how life can be messy ⁓ at work. other things being starting things, starting new things is messy for sure. Like there’s so many details as specifically when I think of starting this podcast, all the things that I did wrong, all the things I had to learn.

I’m just trying to get this to work well and even messy in other ways. Like I really struggled with, is it okay for me to skip a week and not record a podcast episode? Like, what does that mean for me if I don’t show up on a regular consistent basis when I promised that I would? And, you know, I had to work through like, what rules am I placing on myself? Is it really okay to skip a week or skip an episode of the podcast? Well, of course it is.

⁓ And so, you know, that’s just another way that it was messy for me as I really struggled for a few days. ⁓ Is it okay or is it not okay? Like what does, you know, anyway, so moving on another one, just being learning Instagram and social media has been, I mentioned before a huge learning curve. But the thing about social media is that so much of it is polished and perfect and not real. And for me, it’s very important to me that ⁓

I do things that are real, not still real, but still with a certain amount of excellence. so finding that balance can sometimes be hard, but there’s some people that filter every image that they put up on their social media and they only post the pictures where their hair is in neat and tidy and in all the right positions. ⁓

Definitely I’ve been tempted to do that and I’ve really had to struggle against that because that’s not real life. Real life is messy. It’s not perfect and polished, neat and tidy. And so what we see on social media can really get us into trouble because we look at that and think it’s reality. We see what’s going on in other people’s lives and think that that’s reality and think that that’s how we have to show up to be, to have a good, happy, successful life and it’s not. So. ⁓

you know, something that I’ve had to watch out for when it comes to social media. It’s, you know, stop going after what looks perfect and polished and just be your real self, true, your true self. ⁓ Another thing that came up for me recently is, you know, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve got a historical novel sitting on my laptop that I haven’t finished. I wrote it a couple of years ago. I’ve been really wanting to get back to it and then maybe try to get back into.

writing novels and getting an agent again. But I had put that aside when I started the podcast. then also had, God had talked to me about starting a book on intimacy with him. And so that rough draft is almost done. Well, here I am now. God has been telling me for a while to write a book on lament.

And ⁓ I really felt in the last couple of weeks that him kind of nudging me to do that. And I thought, there’s no way, like my brain is not working at full capacity. How on earth can I even think about starting to write a book right now? And ⁓ to me, because I want things to be sequential, predictable, neat and tidy, to me what that should look like is finish this book, then move to this book, then move to this book, and then get them published in that order.

That is not reality and that’s not the way God works and so it was a struggle for me to go start this book on lament in the midst of grieving the loss of my dad I thought I you know My brain isn’t gonna be able to handle this and I was wrong when I sat down and tried to do some writing It really started to flow and I was able to pull some excerpts from my journal

And so I thought, okay, God is smarter than me. He knows that now is the right time to start this book. Now, whether I finish it this year or not is irrelevant. What I need to do is in the midst of my mess, get it started. So that’s another example. Another thing that has come up for me is that friendships are messy.

You know, we often put wrong expectations on each other and we might say something that hurt somebody else’s feelings, but we didn’t realize that at the time or we didn’t mean for it to sound like that. I noticed ⁓ this past couple of weeks that ⁓ because you’re

extra emotional when you’re grieving, I have gotten mad at certain people for doing things that is not rational. And I’ve had to catch myself and say, okay, I am overreacting to this because I’m not in a good spot. Not because this person did anything wrong, but it’s in my heart. And so, you know, that’s messy. You know, I’m being unreasonable with some of my friends.

because I’m not my best self and that’s okay. I just need to rein it in and watch it, be aware and do my best to keep it in balance. So friendships are messy and complicated and people are gonna let you down. You are not gonna be the best friend all the time. ⁓ You’re gonna make mistakes. They’re gonna make mistakes. So friendships are messy. I mean, and it’s the same way with family. Family is complicated. ⁓ Even when you have a healthy family and ⁓ all of your baggage is healed and cleaned up.

there’s, it’s still going to be complicated. ⁓ Most families have division. Most families have, you know, there people who won’t talk to each other or, you know, problems with boundaries or, you know, all sorts of things. I think for me, ⁓ one issue that has come up off and on is having a son in the military can be complicated because I can’t always reach him when I want to. He is not always available to come home.

when I want him to, I mean, there’s been times where I’ve had to go 11 or 12 months without seeing him. And I don’t like that, right? That is not neat and tidy. ⁓ I think ⁓ recently, you know, me and Tim have been trying to plan a family trip with our children. And now that they’re grown, it’s a lot more complicated. We have to work out schedules, not just with the four of us, you know, having different schedules, but then also with my ⁓

my daughter’s husband now being in the picture, we have to consider his schedule. So it just, there’s just so much to life that is complicated and messy. I mean, there’s so many other things. Having pets is messy. Raising children is messy. Coordinating schedules with family and friends and, you know, church activities, it just, gets messy. And I think like even owning a home, I can’t tell you how many times over the last few weeks.

I’ve been trying to convince myself to get out and do the weeding in the flower bed. And every time I pull in the driveway, I just cringe because my flower beds just look so disgusting. But especially over the last three weeks, I have not had the extra energy to go out there and be responsible. And then I was asking myself, well, if I’m struggling so much, why can’t I just ask for help? Right? And so these are, there’s just so many different ways lately that I’ve noticed.

how my life has been messy. I think most people can relate to some of those. ⁓ So, you know, I think life would be a whole lot easier if things would just go the way I want, if things would just be sequential and predictable. ⁓ But what I’ve learned and what God keeps reminding me of is that resisting the mess actually makes life harder. We make ourselves miserable when we try to hold on, when we try to control, when we try to make things look a certain way. And so as much as I have

really been leaning into being better in those in this area of controlling things. I still see so many little places where life feels out of control, where I feel uncomfortable, where life is messy, and I don’t like it. And I’m trying to make it fit into something that looks neat and tidy. But I feel like especially in the last couple weeks, God has been quietly ⁓

quietly whispering to my heart just an invitation to accept the mess, accept that life is messy and that that’s okay and actually come to terms with the fact that life was never supposed to be neat and tidy. And so by me trying to make it neat and tidy, ⁓ I’m going against what is natural or normal, if you will. God’s been really inviting me to slow down

let go, stop resisting in several different areas, like a lot of those things that I just shared. ⁓ And so I’ve been asking myself, what does it look like in the day to day to embrace the mess, accept the mess? ⁓ I’m still trying to understand it, but here is, let me just share a story. Here is one thing that God ⁓ showed me in an experience with hiking to a waterfall that really made me pause and ponder.

⁓ The beauty of the mess and and that is that to me that doesn’t sound right beauty in the mess It just doesn’t make sense, but there really is beauty in the mess of life if we will if we are willing to look for it, so Here’s what happened the other day Memorial Day I had cleared a bunch of stuff off of my schedule because I just didn’t have any energy I think ⁓ Most of most everybody knows that when when you’re dealing with sorrow and loss

Like you have no energy to do much of anything. so I basically, I was just working. ⁓ I was, I did a couple of church things and then I was resting. was laying down, watching TV, reading books, going for walks, just doing, doing things, normal things to cope with the grief. ⁓ And so anyway, all that to say.

⁓ My husband had, ⁓ typically goes golfing on holidays. And so I said, what time are you going to get home? Cause I was thinking that I know maybe we should go, you know, do hiking, a waterfall. One of our goals now that we’re empty nesters is to do more exploring. And so we’ve been trying to get out and just visit a bunch of waterfalls throughout the Carolinas. And we’ve been enjoying that. ⁓ So we ended up, ⁓

Tim decided not to go golfing and this is silly, but I was actually mad because I woke up that day feeling like I didn’t want to go even though we had planned it. And so I was in a bad mood. had a headache. I just didn’t feel well. I didn’t think I had the energy to do a hike. And I thought, well, this is silly. It’s, know, we’re talking a mile. I can handle a mile. And so ⁓ I finally got moving and I felt like God had told me to go out there with no agenda. And that kind of made me mad too. I was like, okay, well,

my agenda is actually good. I’m trying to rest and enjoy nature. Like there’s nothing wrong with that agenda. man, I was in the worst mood. so I, you know, took my shower, got dressed, all the things. we ended up leaving about an hour later than what I had planned, which my husband, I’m such a punctual person. My husband was like, well, this is weird. Like we normally we’re not.

Usually late to you know leaving late, but I thought you know, I don’t really have a timetable I just prefer to be outside when it’s cooler and I didn’t want to be outside when I got hot in the afternoon So, you know, we’re driving up to this County Park It’s like an hour and 20 minutes I think to the drive and I’m trying to get out of this bad mood and so we get there and I realized Because it had been really raining the night before and even into the morning ⁓

there was only two other vehicles in this entire county park. And so I thought, this is amazing. Like for me, when I’m out in nature, I prefer not to see other people, which is very hard to do. just, mean, people like to go out and hike in parks. It’s just, that’s normal. So I was pleasantly surprised that we were there for probably about 30 minutes and never saw another soul except for the park ranger. And ⁓ it was…

incredibly beautiful. It smelled amazing. You know, I love the water. You know, the sound of water is soothing. It’s good for our brains, all the things. And so I remember being, ⁓ taking a video of the first waterfall we came across. I still felt tired and burdened. And by then I think my headache had mostly gone away. But then, you know, by the end of that visit to the park,

I took a video of a different waterfall and I just remember feeling so happy and so giddy. Like I couldn’t stop smiling and I thought, wow, look at the difference 30 minutes has made in my life. Just being out in this, in this beautiful forest, in this beautiful County park, ⁓ the difference in my mood, it was a night and day. It was crazy to me. And I thought, okay, God knew what he was doing when he told me to come out here with no agenda and just enjoy nature, enjoy his creation.

⁓ And so that was just a really beautiful way to start ⁓ my morning. But then we move into the messy part of our journey. went to, we drove, ⁓ I can’t remember how far away it was, but we drove to another area and ⁓ parked the car, parked the truck and it was a super small parking lot. And I thought, well, this is really strange. I would have thought that there would be more parking for this.

waterfall hike for a state park. I think this was in the state park. And so we’re walking down this hill, we’re walking, walking, and we’re like, okay, it’s been a mile. We really should have reached the waterfall by now. Why don’t we hear anything? Why don’t we, like, why are we not really seeing anything? And all of a sudden we get to a trailhead and we’re looking around in this big open dirt space and we realize this is a parking area. And where we had parked, because ⁓

it was closed off so we had no choice. Apparently what we had just hiked was a road that was supposed to go to the main trailhead but I’m assuming that due to weather the road was pretty messed up it would have been very difficult to drive down it even with the four-wheel drive so we were like my goodness we just walked a mile that we weren’t planning to walk and we still have another mile to get to the waterfall and so we were like well you know we’re not on a timetable we’ll go ahead and go and so we kept going and we were

you know, by now we’re like really in the forest itself. And so it was cool. It smelled wonderful. It was just so beautiful, relaxing, soothing. And so we’re really just enjoying this hike. And so we finally get down to the bottom of the hill and get to the waterfall. And there was another family there sort of off to the side. So they were out of the way enough that we could enjoy.

taking a few pictures and ⁓ just, you know, refreshing our face with some water. And so it ⁓ was lovely, but then in the back of my mind, I’m thinking, my goodness, I’ve just walked two miles downhill, which means I now have to walk two miles uphill to get back to the truck. And I am not in very good shape, I wouldn’t say.

So I thought, how in the world am I going to do this? This is not what I wanted. This is not what I planned. And if I would have known this was going to end up being closer to a five mile hike, I would have never come out here. And so I’m like, you know, in my mind trying to psych myself up, like, I can do this. This is going to be fun. Isn’t it beautiful out here? Like, I’m just going to focus on the surroundings and not focus on how hard it’ll be to climb back out. And so we did it. We got back to the truck, you know.

⁓ And I wasn’t as exhausted as I thought I was gonna be. I mean, it was hard hiking up that hill. It was definitely difficult for me. But my husband’s at a really good pace and I was able to just focus on one foot in front of the other and getting up this hill. And ⁓ we were tired, but it was, I felt good by the time I got back to the truck. I thought I would feel ⁓ yucky, sick, like whatever.

And I wasn’t. So I was really excited. And so I’m kind of like pondering this, OK, Lord, you knew this was going to be the perfect condition for me to take this trip and to do this thing that I wouldn’t have normally done. And so it really took me back to what I’ve shared before about just the different things in Australia where I wouldn’t have normally done these things, but because it was a special occasion and I was trying to be more of a risk taker and be more adventurous. ⁓ I did those.

I did those things like climbing up on that rock in the waterfall, petting the tiger, all of that. And what a beautiful experience those were. And so I’m kind of reflecting on this hike and thinking, you know, what a beautiful experience it was, not just the waterfall itself, but just hiking through that forest was just so refreshing. I felt so refreshed. We, we headed back into town, grabbed some lunch at a salad bar and then headed home. And, know, I did take a nap. I was a bit tired, but

I had so much energy. felt so refreshed. felt like my normal self for the rest of the day. And even into the next day when I went to work, like I kicked butt at work. I got so much done that Tuesday. I worked, ⁓ and got a lot of stuff caught up. I don’t know, caught up. I wasn’t really that far behind, but I felt so accomplished and, ⁓ all because I had this refreshing hour long hike through a woods. Really? You know, it just didn’t seem like it should have equaled that.

right? The input shouldn’t have equaled such an amazing output. ⁓ Am I saying that right? Anyway, so here’s the thing that God was kind of talking with me about a few days after that. He said, you know, ⁓ this was messy. This hike did not look the way you wanted it to. You you would have liked to have spent more time sitting in front of the waterfall, just enjoying.

the water portion, which was difficult to do when you had this family out there laughing and splashing in the water. ⁓ And so I had in my mind of what I thought that it should look like to go down and see this waterfall. And it was nothing like that. For example, there’s a lot of the dirt in the Carolinas is a lot of red clay. And that makes a mess, a huge mess. So we had clay all over our shoes and our ankles. ⁓

It ended up, by the time we got back to the truck, was 77 degrees out, which isn’t that bad, but for me, that’s really hot. And so we were pretty sweaty and kind of just gross. I don’t like that. I don’t like to be sweaty. ⁓ We had not took any water with us because we thought, this is just gonna be.

a hike for about a mile and a half, maybe two miles. We didn’t want to carry a bunch of stuff in and out because we had never been down there and didn’t know what to expect. And so, you know, I’m really thirsty by the time we get back to the truck, but you know what? I was fine. I made it an hour without water. We were fine. Like we didn’t get sick or like we had no physical issues because we didn’t happen to have enough water with us at the moment. So, you know, if I would have known and I could have planned ahead, I would have things would have looked different or I wouldn’t have even gone right. ⁓

You know, but I would have missed out and it’s not just missing out on the view of the waterfall but missing out on the whole experience of like Look at this. I just climbed up a hill for two miles never in my wildest dreams what I thought that I Would be capable of that let alone enjoy hiking up a hill, right? And so You know God just reminding me it was about the experience It was about the journey was never about the destination of seeing that waterfall and getting to the end

But it was about just the whole environment of enjoying the time with my husband, enjoying the forest and the, and the, you know, the beauty of the creation. ⁓ so it, to me, it was just such a great picture of how, yeah, life is not always going to go the way we want in life is going to be messy a lot. But if we put our focus in the right spot, if we choose to enjoy what the experience in it and look at the good instead of the bad.

If that’s where our focus is, then messy isn’t going to be a negative thing. It can actually be a positive thing. So what I felt God was really challenging me is to stop defining messy as bad, stop defining complicated as bad. And that is something that I definitely have had a tendency to do. And I think that a lot of people struggle with this when we see something that doesn’t go our way, we label it as bad and we get frustrated and

What if, you know, what if messy is how God meant life to look because it’s in the mess that we grow, that we learn, that we become our best selves. If we never had any challenges or trials, how would we grow? How would we ⁓ overcome? How would we build resilience? Right. So what if messy and complicated, just like hiking that waterfall ⁓ in that park? What if it was actually good for me because

that definitely was good for me and I would have defined it as bad. I assumed I would not enjoy it. So where am I assuming that I’m not going to enjoy life because it doesn’t look the way that I want? If I were to have a different attitude, a different mindset about it, know, messy can actually be good for me. Messy can actually be beautiful. How would I enjoy my life and how would ⁓ how would things be better for me if I would choose that sort of perspective? So

As we go about the week, I challenge you to explore the depths of these final thoughts. So where do you need to accept the mess? What in your life is messy that you don’t like that maybe you just need to embrace this is what it’s supposed to look like and be okay with it looking that way. What areas of your life are you trying to hold onto so that you can make them look a certain way so that you can make them fit into sequential order or make them become predictable

So just some things to ponder this week. ⁓ That’s it for now. Thanks for bearing with me, and I will talk to you soon.