Side Effects of Being a Mess

I love Christmas. And I love finding or making the perfect gift for someone.
This year, there is one present that I was so stoked about because it was perfect (or at least as close as I figure I'll ever be able to get on my budget).
You see, I have this friend who is really cool and sometimes it comes out of her as weirdness to those who are not nearly as awesome as she clearly is.
So I had this genius idea of getting a t-shirt and putting the adorable phrase, "Weird is just a side effect of awesome." on it and give it to her. Close to perfection, right?
And after a quick trip to Wal-Mart to grab a bleach pen (which is my newest favorite invention, by the way), I was all set to go.
I made the shirt, rinsed off the bleach and threw it in the wash to get off the extra bleach, being careful to follow the pinterest instructions to the letter so as not to mess up this most perfect of gifts.
My wonderfully honest roommate came home while it was still in the wash and I told her of my fantastic gift and how I couldn't wait for her to see it!
We literally were waiting for the machine to stop spinning so I could show the best gift ever to her and she could compliment my awesome gift making skills.
But, as I mentioned before, my roommate is blessed with the gift of honesty and as I held up my really awesome bleached shirt for her to compliment, she says, "I think you spelled 'weird' wrong."
NO!
NO!
NO!
I did not believe her until Google, Wikipedia, and Dictionary.com proved that I had indeed put, "Wierd is just a side effect of awesome" with bleach on my friends no-longer-perfect Christmas present.
I couldn't help but laugh at myself. Especially since Urban Dictionary says that "wierd" is for people who don't know how to spell weird.
And after a lot of laughter and some more spell-checking, I realized that I honestly really like the shirt better now.
Yeah, some people may look at it and think, "Some dummy doesn't know how to spell 'weird.'" And some may think it's weird to begin with (most likely the unawesome people out there). And some may say I should give up and start over.
But I absolutely adore this shirt. Because it shows how much of a mess I am. Because it has a story behind it. Because I thought it would be perfect if I got it all just right and spelled all the words right and in the right order, but it's really more perfect because it's not perfect.
And isn't that just like the way Christ sees us? We want to be perfect and get all the words right and do everything all nice and clean, and maybe even get the "I" before "E" rule correct every now and then (over-achievers). But then we mess up, we say something dumb, or we forget to be kind, or we get selfish, or we spell "weird" weird, and suddenly we feel our worth slipping. Like God might just give up on us and decide someone else is more worth his time.
But instead God loves us. He just loves us and the way we can't spell "weird" or how we can't remember people's birthdays, or how we spill our coffee every Tuesday... He just loves us! He can't get enough of how we forgot to put the butter in the recipe, or when we cry for no reason, or how we get lost so easily. Our little (and BIG!) messes don't lessen or cheapen our value in God's eyes, He understands that we're gonna mess it up and get it wrong, and he still calls us his treasure.
And that's just a side effect of being loved. Messes become beautiful. And more importantly, through the mess of our lives we can point to the incredible fact that we are still loved more than we could ever imagine. Because would God's love really be all that great if He only loved us because we were clean and neat? NO! God's love is great because it's a love that's not afraid to come into our mess and clean us up some but still love us when we can't recall how to spell "weird."
So I'm going to keep this shirt and wear it with joy and pride because while I love how perfectly imperfect it is, it is such a clear reminder of how God loves us even when we're a mess too. =)

God bless!