God Bless This Hot Mess

I groaned in frustration as I viewed my Instagram feed. “Again?” I asked to no one in particular. Filling my screen was yet another picture of a friend off on an incredible adventure with the perfect pose in the perfect setting, the wind blowing perfectly through her perfect hair. It was, well, perfect.

In today’s social media world, we get accustomed to seeing everyone with their beautifully filtered, seemingly picture-perfect lives and can often be left feeling ‘less than’.

Yet we seem to have an addiction to making ourselves look like we have it all together. We rarely see people confessing their failures to the world on Facebook, posting unfiltered photos on ‘the gram’, or sharing the video where we fell on our keister trying to do a beautiful balance pose on a wet rock at the beach (I may or may not have experienced this one…).

But our God wants us to be raw and real with Him. Romans 5:8 tells us, “But God shows His love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Or as I personalize this verse, “Cyndi, while you were still a hot mess, I came to rescue you. I am so crazy about you I think you are to die for.” He didn’t wait for us to have our act together to save us. He wants us to come as we are and leave the perfection up to Him, because He has perfection mastered.

I don’t know about you, but I would love to hear God say one day, “Cyndi was a woman after my own heart.” I believe if I’m going to hear that from my Savior, I have to realize that God loves me as I am—hot mess and all.