Letting God clean up our Messes

It’s amazing how God uses our difficulties to teach us things.  I experienced this yet again a little over a year ago and wrote about it.  Just now posting……

April 2018-  My house has recently been inundated with cats- a momma cat who had kittens.

I should preface this to say that I’m not a cat person, but most of my family is, so I’m having to deal.  We have them inside while the kittens are small and until we can have momma cat fixed.

Since they are inside I am experiencing litter boxes for the first time.

I have gotten most of my cat information from online and I read that the box needs to be emptied about every week and the litter changed out.  

Saturday it had been a little over a week, so it was time for the big change.

We have a larger size litter box so the cat won’t make such a mess by scattering the litter everywhere.  I thought this was really smart until I went to empty it.

I took it outside so the dust wouldn’t get everywhere.  I thought, I’ll just empty it into a trash bag and toss it in the big garbage can outside and be done.

Carefully I  worked half the litter box into the trash bag on the ground,  lifted the box and it smoothly dumped all the litter into the bag.  

Easy peasy! I thought this won’t be so bad….

I should really learn that when that thought comes to mind I should be extra careful because things are about to go wrong.

I started to pick up the trash bag and take it the 2-3 steps to the big garbage can to throw it away when I realized how heavy kitty litter actually can be.  

I picked up the bag easy enough, but lifting it over the half fence to put it in the garbage can was proving to be a little harder. I got it to the top of the fence.

Ok, I thought, almost there. The bag was sitting on the ledge of the fence, but was spilling through the cracks and on the other side of the fence. I attempted to pick up one section and it created  a hole in the bag, causing a stream of litter to cascade to the ground.

I said, “No, no ,no,no” like the bag was going to hear me and stop splitting open. I quickly covered the hole with my hand and stopped the flow of litter. This is when I knew I might be in trouble.

While covering the hole with one hand, I picked up the bag and pushed another overflowing side up and over the top of the fence.  This created another, bigger hole in the bag, causing another stream of litter to cascade to the ground.

I clapped my other hand over that hole, stopping the flow of litter, but now I was out of hands.

This is the point where Lucy would be screaming for Ethel. 

The door to the house was closed and the only person downstairs had headphones on and could not of heard me if I yelled. I thought about texting someone inside, but I couldn’t let go of the bag or I would lose more litter and make a bigger mess.

So I just stood there,

outside,

leaning on the fence,

holding a bursting trash bag of used kitty litter with two hands,

attempting to not make a bigger mess.

 

As I stood there contemplating what I could do, I thought, the only option is to just let go and put the bag back on the ground and scoop it  inside another bag to stop the holes from leaking and support the rest of the bag so it would not break.

Moving it to the ground meant letting go and making a little mess so I could avoid a bigger mess.

Resigning myself to the mess that was about to be made, I took my hands off the of the holes and dropped the bag to the ground.

More litter did fall out, but once the bag was on the ground, it stopped.

I proceeded to get the torn bag into a new one and eventually got it in the big garbage can. I then cleaned up the mess that was made, washed out the kitty litter box and was drying it off when a family member stepped outside and asked if I needed help.

I swallowed the urge to go off on that unsuspecting person and just said, “For future reference, use two garbage bags to empty the litter box.  

It wasn’t until later that day that I felt God metaphorically tap me on the  shoulder.

“Remember this afternoon when you were trying to take care of the litter box all by yourself and you got stuck.  One hole, then two holes opening up and litter began pouring out? Did you think about how much easier it would have been if you had asked someone for help before you started?”

I truly felt like He said, “Can you see where I’m going with this?” and laughed.

Our lives can be like that. We try to handle a big problem on our own and things can start to fall apart.  Holes can come up in our lives where things start spilling out and we end up with a mess. The more we try to fix it ourselves, the bigger mess we can make.  When that happens and we see no way out, we have to lay it at the feet of Jesus and let Him help us through.

When I finally laid the torn bag down on the ground, the mess stopped. 

 When I laid the second, perfect bag, with no holes, on the ground to envelop the bag with holes to help get it to the trash can, it was a picture of  laying our problems down, our messes, at the feet of Jesus and allowing Him to take our mess and clean it up.  

He will envelop us, wrap His arms around us and our mess  and He can help us through them.

Yes there might still be a mess from where we tried to do it ourselves, but God can give us the patience we need to clean it up and make it through.