I stood in the middle of my kitchen, hands clenched, jaw clenched tighter. I squeezed my eyes shut and tilted my face to the ceiling. I didn’t need my eyes to see what I was looking for.

I stood that way, something spilled on the floor, glitter all over, and dinner burning on the stove. I did the only thing left, the only thing that mattered.

I cried out, “JESUS!!!”

This was not a curse or a quiet whisper. This was a cry from that place deep inside me that needed more than I could muster to get through all that was happening around me. His name rang loud and long, the vowels dragging on with a hidden question mark at the end.

I needed help. I was so frustrated, so beyond myself and my ability to reign things in. I stood there, kids staring up at me as I cried out.

Some say you should not yell in front of your kids. Maybe that’s true.

Some say I should have gone in another room and sought the Lord. Maybe that’s true, too.

But in real life, things get hard. And when things are hard I want my kids to see that you can call out to Jesus. (tweet that) You can cry out messy and loud or completely unspoken. You can cry out gentle and full of hope or you can writhe and call out twisty and dark. Because the truth we forget is that He comes.

Before you think I entertain crazy ideas of Jesus fixing everything around me, calling out to Jesus had nothing to do with my circumstances and everything to do with me.

Dinner was still burnt.

Glitter was everywhere.

And the milk was still dripping off the table.

But Jesus came.

Jesus didn’t clean up the glitter, but He did come and fill me up. He brought a resolve that I could get through this. I could clean up the mess around me and it wouldn’t break me. I could figure out something to feed my family and I wouldn’t need to take 3 kids out again. I could handle hard things because He handled them with me.

Maybe you’re not facing glitter and burnt dinner. Maybe you’re in the middle of something at work where everything seems to be going wrong. Maybe you are lonely and tired of walking through the hard things without a hand to hold. Maybe you are uncertain of what to do next in your life and you feel like you’re spinning at a crossroads.

No matter where you are, the answer is Jesus.

Take a moment, close your eyes and cry out to Him. Maybe you can’t yell his name like I did, but you can cry out in your heart. You don’t even need words.

His name is enough. His presence is enough. He is enough.

You may not know where to turn. You may still be alone or that project at work is still in shambles. But Jesus…

When we invite Him into the mess and give Him permission to reside there with us in all the frustrated, angry, confused, loneliness, He shows up.

He shows up in ways we never knew we needed.

He shows up full of grace.

He shows up.

And when He is there, we can get through those hard things. We can get beyond ourselves and our emotions to a place where we see differently. We can drop our shoulders, open our eyes, and exhale.

That day in my kitchen was not a ‘one and done’ crying out. I may have cleaned up the mess and figured out dinner, but there were more messes on the horizon. The horizon has a way of doing that, going on and on with things we can’t possibly see from here. No matter what we face or how we face it, we don’t have to do it alone.

When we call on the name of Jesus, He comes.

Blessings,

Becky Hastings

Becky believes in embracing grace in the messy real of life. At My Ink Dance, she captures hard, uncomfortable, often unspoken feelings and brings light, honesty and God’s truth to them in a relatable way. Becky is a wife and mother of three in Connecticut writing imperfect and finding faith along the way.