Liz Rasley

My life: it’s all swiss cheese and gift wrap at the moment. The translation? It’s sort of messy.

I liken it to swiss cheese: holey, missing parts-and somedays-it’s like there is not enough caulk in the world to patch the holes I keep stumbling upon, unaware.

This same sort of thing happens to me often around Christmas too; the literal sense of how I feel most days.

I, proudly thinking that I have prepared well enough for all the gift wrapping to come, that I have calculated out the correct density and height of whatever I’m wrapping, and have enough paper to more than cover all sides of the gift, proceed to arrogantly cut the paper to wrap the gift, only to behold this: the paper does not meet in the middle.

It doesn’t match up.

So, then in an instant, I realize I have to patch in some random gift wrap paper (because somehow, I always use the last bit of the gift wrap that would actually match it), all the while cussing and sweating and trying to figure out where I miscalculated, where I could have gone so wrong with the whole gift to gift wrapping paper ratio.

And then I usually sigh.

And that’s kind of where I’m at right now: a great deal of sighing, some holes and unsightly gaps in my life needing some patching, and a whole lot of gift wrap not meeting in the middle, not lining up nicely, where it should.

Oh, should. That nasty, guilty word.

And most of the time, it feels like all of this means that I don’t add up; that somehow others have figured out the answers to these sorts of problems, that they are smarter than me and somehow are able to guesstimate gift wrap and can get their gift wrap seams (and also: their lives) to measure up in some way that I cannot.

Not everyday is like this, but lately it seems a constant challenge. Some days the holes are pinpricks and paper cuts, and some days they feel like they gnaw at the very foundation of me, like the way a termite goes after wood.

Thankfully, though-I’m not alone in this.

Certainly I’m not the only one whose life is messy, not the only one whose laundry basket is generously overflowing but whose patience is running thin and low.

Not the only one, right? Right?  

And though I am so uncertain, so fragile at times, I am solidly certain of this: that God is here.

That Jesus cares.

And loves me, even me with the gift wrap calculation problems, even me with the more-holey-than-holy-swiss-cheese life, and is even ok with that giant laundry basket that seems to consume more dirty clothes by the hour.

This makes all the difference in the world.

This helps me, especially on those days that I stare off into the sunset and wonder, those tough days I want to shake my fists at the sky and say “This better be a really good lesson!”

Jesus loves me, even through that.  And that is awesome.