Enter “The Mess”
From Failure and Frustration to Transformation
“…He obeyed and he went, even though he did not know where he was going.” -Hebrews 11:8
I was on my knees, my elbows resting on the edge of my hotel-room bed.
The Twin Towers had horrifically fallen. With them, the hotel and resort industry had come to an abrupt standstill—and the sale of our hotel-management company and La Costa Resort and Spa had collapsed. We had more than a thousand employees and no income with which to pay them.
I knelt and prayed:
“Lord, if You see us through this, I promise I will devote the rest of my life to serving You.”
Then, in a way I can only describe as miraculous, another buyer emerged. Fifty days later, the sale was completed.
Just as suddenly, after a lifetime of 24/7 hospitality, I had no position, no schedule and no idea what came next. I did not handle idleness well.
“Lazy hands make for poverty, but diligent hands bring wealth.” —Proverbs 10:4
Several months later, I heard a hurting young man share his testimony at church. He told us about Eastside Academy, a “last-chance” Christian alternative high school that had loved him toward hope. His story moved me to engage. (I tell more of that story in “The Fix,” found in The Journal.)
I entered Eastside Academy believing that my experience had equipped me to help “fix” those kids. I quickly discovered that my former positions, authority and prescriptions meant little to them—and perhaps even worked against me.
But as I drew closer, drove them home, listened to their stories and saw where and how some of them lived, I began entering the mess of their lives. Their choices and struggles sometimes frustrated and exasperated me. I felt deeply in over my head.
Still, God had called me to go.
“By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.” —Hebrews 11:8
When I shared my frustration with my friend Greg Stone, he sent me the following words from author and pastor Eugene Peterson. They reached my heart, changed my head and helped shape the second half of my hospitality career: the ministry of Christ-centered hospitality.
Peterson helped me understand that God’s redemptive work often unfolds amid the friction of conflict and the complications of human brokenness, sin and struggle. It requires patient, persistent and often unglamorous engagement.
We cannot witness the Creator Spirit slowly bringing forth His transformational love, beauty and peace while remaining safely outside the mess. We must trust God enough to enter it—and remain long enough and go deeply enough to discover that we, too, are being changed.
The following excerpt is from Eugene H. Peterson’s Under the Unpredictable Plant: An Exploration in Vocational Holiness (Eerdmans, 1992).
When Peterson was asked what he liked best about ministry, he responded: “Entering into the mess of people’s lives.”
He went on to explain:
“Actually, I don’t like the mess at all. I hate the mess. I hate the uncertainty. I hate not knowing how long this is going to last. I hate the unanswered questions, the limbo of confused and indecisive lives, the tangle of motives and emotions. What I love is the creativity. And what I know is that I can never be involved in creativity except by entering the mess.…
“Mess is the precondition of creativity. Creativity is not neat. It is not orderly. When we are being creative a great deal of what we do is wrong. When we are being creative, we are not efficient.
“In any creative enterprise there are risks, mistakes, false starts, failures, frustrations, embarrassments, but out of this mess—when we stay with it long enough, enter it deeply enough—there slowly emerges love, beauty, and peace. Wherever two or three are gathered together in Jesus’ name our Lord the Spirit is there. The ‘Creator Spirit.’
To me, one of the biggest words in the Bible is “Go.”
God already has the plan. He asks us to have faith—to trust Him enough to go, often before we know where the road will lead. We may enter believing that God intends to use us to change someone else, only to discover that He is changing us along the way.
Go. Enter the mess. Stay. Love long enough, listen deeply enough and learn to trust God fully enough to witness the “Creator Spirit’s” love, beauty, peace and…amazing grace.