I love tidiness. No mess, no stress is my ideal home environment. And until I had children that was my home environment. Not these days. When I walk into a messy room I feel my stress levels rising. Why is there stuff on the floor? Why weren’t things put away after the playing was done? Why exactly is there a bottle of lemon juice on the living room floor rather than in the fridge? Children are messy. They don’t put toys away when they’re done with them. In fact, they seem to think just tossing them onto the floor is fun. And when encouraged to clean up, often a best-case response is a frown and slumped shoulders as they half-heartedly throw things back onto the shelf.
I find it difficult to live in the mess of everyday parenting life. It wears me down as I return to picking up the same dolls and blocks and books day after day. Worse, it can make me angry or resentful or set unrealistic expectations on my young children. I can sometimes see mess as an enemy or as a failure of my parenting.
The Necessity of Mess
Fortunately, God did not leave me in this misunderstanding of messiness. He brought Proverbs 14:4 to my attention—and it speaks directly to this worry. It says: “Where there are no oxen, the manger is clean, but abundant crops come by the strength of the ox” (ESV). In other words, excessive tidiness may be a visual indicator that something more important is missing.
The proverb says that if you’re a farmer, your ability to survive and thrive is dependent on those oxen. You need them to drag your plough, carry your harvest and tread your wheat or corn. Without them, ploughing and gathering is too slow—you won’t have enough crops to feed your family or to sell for income. You might not survive, but hey, at least you’ll have a tidy stable. There won’t be any oxen to make a mess of the food you give them or leave their droppings all over the floor.
Can you see the similarity with parenting? Perhaps I could paraphrase the proverb: Where there are no children, the house is clean, but abundant fruit comes by the raising of each child. Just like it is impossible to have an ox that does not make a mess of its manger, it is impossible to have a child that does not make a mess of your house (for some years, at least). That mess is an inevitable outcome of becoming a parent and raising children. But it is a good mess. It is a mess that demonstrates you have something more important than tidiness: the God-given gift of your children.
Reinterpreting Mess
“Be fruitful and multiply,” says God to Adam and Eve in Genesis 1:28 (ESV), not “Be tidy and take it easy.” Solomon says in Psalm 127:
Children are a heritage from the Lord,
offspring a reward from him.
Like arrows in the hands of a warrior
are children born in one’s youth.
Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them (verses 3–5 (NIV).
So also, “Grandchildren are the crown of the aged,” says the author of Proverbs 17:6 (ESV).
Is a tidy house bad? Not at all, but neither is a messy house. Rather, I should value the messiness caused by children as a good sign. It is a sign that I have something far more important than tidiness: the abundant fruit that comes by the raising of each child.
Reinterpreting the mess caused by my children is a heart change. It requires the work of the Spirit in me and remembering that my children—and everything they bring with them—are a blessing from God. Children bring mess, but they also bring love, happiness, support for me as they grow older, and even surprising wisdom and new ways of seeing the world.
I have written previously about the way God has taught me what it means that he is my Father through my children, and I have no doubt that God uses parenting to grow us in our faith. Parenting is both a test of and an outpouring of your love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. And through testing, God grows us.
Mess as a Reminder
So as I am picking up those toys or cleaning up the food on the highchair or vacuuming dirt off the carpet, I try to remind myself that these are all signs pointing to something good. Not in a begrudging, “Children are a blessing, children are a blessing” coping strategy, but in a prayerful, “Lord, I thank you that this mess reminds me of how you blessed me with my children.” The mess might still need cleaning up, but it is not my enemy and does not make me a failed parent.
If you, like me, love tidiness and orderliness, this can still be deeply challenging to deal with each day. Through both nature and nurture, I have been wired to value a tidy house. Messiness just seems wrong, which is why I am grateful that God, through his word, can correct that misconception. When it comes to raising children, it is messiness, not cleanliness, that is next to godliness.
