a pretty little basket...

last night was the first "momtourage" book study. a group of moms all gathered for the same purpose ~ to have a place to be transparent and real, to gain support from other women in the same walk of life and to discover what God has in store for us as moms and wives and so many other roles we play.

for our first night together, we had time to fellowship and had an icebreaker and some time to share prayer requests. i brought the "prop" for the icebreaker. yesterday, i found a basket and gathered a bunch of random items and put them in the basket. as i was doing that, i thought to myself, i have soooo many of these baskets of "stuff" lying around my house, i should have just brought one of those -- it would have been effortless! the one thing about myself that i was reminded of was that i LOVE and NEED organization in my life -- hence all the baskets and containers of stuff. but truly, if you looked inside of one of those baskets or a closet for that matter, you would probably see a bunch of stuff that may not have any kind of organization. with my hectic life, sometimes that is all i can do to maintain some sanity is to collect everything and put it in a container, so at least things look neat and orderly from the outside but what is inside is a bunch of mismatched random items.

so, last night, i asked the ladies to each take a out one item from the basket and explain why they chose that item. that really helped to open up the doors to each of our lives, some things that were shared were very deep, some funny and some sad. but the point was every lady appeared to be open and real! of course, my turn came and i was holding my friend's baby and didn't necessarily have hands to pick out my item, but then this thought came to my mind....

i used the entire pretty little basket as an analogy of my life. my life most often resembles a pretty little basket -- everything looks neat and all together from the outside, but when you get to the inside it is really pretty messy. does anyone else feel like that? i really truly try to be transparent and open and real, but sometimes i appear to have it all together and the truth is i really do not. i never want to appear to be something i am not. but i also know that i really shouldn't wear all of my mess on the outside, because if i did that then i wouldn't be a lot of fun to be around. again, with everything it is a balance. there are times and places and with certain people that i think it is appropriate to be "messy". and there are times when "the pretty little basket" needs to be on display.

please note i am not saying that when you are the "pretty little basket" that you should be pretending to be something that you are not. i am not saying that at all. i just mean we can't always be spilling all of our junk all over the place to everyone we meet. if we did that, as christ followers what kind of example would we be setting. those who are far from christ might just run the opposite way.

so, i think as women with so much stuff in our baskets we need to take the time to sort through our mess and try to be as neat as we can, but never to fear showing others our mess from time to time.