Not staying in the lines

If life were a connect-the-dots coloring book page, my dots would have ruler-straight lines connecting them (because I would have used a ruler) and all the little areas and shapes would be perfectly colored in…colored, of course, all in the same direction using the same-sized brush strokes. I’m not big on messy. Never have been. I guess when I was little, I wouldn’t leave for school until I made my bed. For the record, I don’t make my bed now unless company is coming over.

But, things have felt messy these past few days. I’m going through three days of anti-racism training at work, and the coloring is out of control. I mean…you can’t see where the lines and dots are. I want to draw perfect squares around victimization, superiority, poverty, blame, guilt, but I can’t. There have been tears and bursts of anger and speechlessness throughout the discussions among the 40 or so of us participating. And it’s because there’s no straight line on how to get from there to here and then to there again. We generally say there is because that’s the easy way to deal with things.

I have a girlfriend who, actually as I type this, is meeting with a friend, who is a boy. They’re meeting to discuss what “they” are because it’s messy. A few days ago, I challenged her, wanting to know exactly what she wanted out of this conversation. And she said she honestly couldn’t say, and how could she? There’s seven years of push and pull. Of tears and anger. Of girlfriends and boyfriends. There’s nothing straight about it. And if they come out of this conversation deciding they cannot be "they," the coloring is still going off their page. And the same if they decide to give "they" a shot.

It’s funny that I keep fighting the messiness. Haven’t I figured it out yet? Nothing about life or relationships is ever a straight line. And actually the beauty of life comes right in that place where purple runs over orange, which mixes with yellow and then runs into blue which goes off the page. Who knows where those dots that are supposed to be connected (at least in my mind) are. Rarely do you see them. It’s when you sit in the tension, in the messiness—and trust God rather than trying to pull out your own ruler—that you hit the heart.

I used to love coloring a blank sheet of paper with lots of different colors. If I could use every crayon in the box, great. Then I’d take the black crayon and color over—really really hard—all the colors. In the end I’d have this heavy black sheet of paper and I’m sure mom or grandma was telling me to get in the kitchen with that before I got black crayon on the carpet. Then I’d find a penny and use it to scratch through the black to draw a picture (actually this is when they told me to get in the kitchen!). There were no dots and no lines to stay in, but that was the best part. You never knew exactly what your line was going to look like…when the colors would change. So, maybe I can do messy.