In the Middle of the Mess

I’ve always loved the grandeur of Christmas: twinkling lights, bursts of pine green, crimson red, and glittery gold. Dazzling decorated trees, fanciful holiday feasts, gifts of all shapes and sizes. The splendor of the season is meant to welcome in a King, a Savior, the very Lord God Almighty.

However, if I think back two thousand years ago to that first Christmas, a very different vision comes to mind. In fact, the word I’d use to describe that occasion is “messy.” Think about it: A teenage mother. An out-of-wedlock birth. An exhausted husband. A tyrannical king. A filthy stable. A manger bed. Messy–very messy.

Jesus Christ – Lord, Savior, and King that He was - chose not to make His entrance into this world as a resplendent royal in a glittering palace, but rather, as a tiny infant in a shabby stable. Isaiah described Him as having "no form nor comeliness; and when we see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him” (Isaiah 53:2). He chose to come into a mess, and He continued to come into messy lives throughout His earthly ministry. The ones who knew what it was like to live in a mess: these are the people whose stories He chose to enter.

Emily Belle Freeman said, “Jesus Christ will meet us where we are as we are. This is the why of the garden, the cross, and the tomb.” This is also the “why” of the stable. His role in God’s great plan of happiness is to meet us where we are as we are, to enter our stories, right in the middle of the messes, and help us rise to where He is and become as He is. However, this miracle is only possible because the Holy One of Israel condescended to leave His heavenly sphere and come to this fallen world to experience mortality and all its forms of messiness.

Modern day revelation teaches us, “He that ascended up on high, as also he descended below all things, in that he comprehended all things, that he might be in all and through all things, the light of truth” (Doctrine and Covenants 88:6). The King of kings came down from His throne on high to experience living in a mess so that He could help us through our own messes.

I recently returned home from 18 months of service as a full-time missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I lived in Malaysia and Singapore and had many incredible, life-changing experiences – but one sticks out to me specially during this holiday season. Last December, I lived in a tiny town called Sibu in the thick jungles of East Malaysia. Every year, the members of the church there had a tradition of caroling all month long. We would all stay after church, pile into cars and drive to every household in the congregation. We would sing a few Christmas hymns in Malay, share a scripture about Christ, and present a gift basket. I entered many homes and worshiped with members from all walks of life.

For one family, we walked a mile into the jungle on a rickety raised wooden plank pathway that had rotted and broken through in many places. We finally arrived at what can only be described as an actual shack on stilts. The family warned us as we climbed the 12-foot ladder to reach the front door that we needed to be very careful of where we stepped so we didn’t accidentally fall through the broken floorboards. The walls were filled with holes, just barely covered with ratty blankets to keep the rain out. It was truly a hovel.

And yet, as we all squeezed into their tiny one room house, as we sang “Silent Night” off-key in a language known to only two nations in the world, as we wiped humidity-frizzed hair away from our sweaty foreheads, as we sat in that messy circumstance, I felt the Spirit of God stronger than I ever had in my entire life. And I realized: Christ was with us.

When you feel broken, rotten, worn down, He is there. When you feel dirty or unworthy of love, He is there. If you count yourself among the sinners, outcasts, downtrodden, sick, afflicted, He is there.

Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, apostle of the Lord, taught, “However late you think you are, however many chances you think you have missed, however many mistakes you feel you have made or talents you think you don’t have, or however far from home and family and God you feel you have traveled, I testify that you have not traveled beyond the reach of divine love. It is not possible for you to sink lower than the infinite light of Christ’s Atonement shines.”

Knowing Christ changes everything. He is the reason for the season because He makes reason of everything – even our messiest messes. I am grateful for a merciful Savior that knows my messes and enters into the picture to bring peace. This Christmas season, may we all remember and rejoice in the gift of the Babe of Bethlehem. In the words of Tamara Runia, “He was born to lift each one of us personally. And if He’s anyone’s He is most certainly yours. Christ, the Babe, was born for you.”

Avery Palenske is going back to Brigham Young University in January after completing an eighteen-month-long service mission in Malaysia and Singapore for her church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.