My title is exactly how my day went; like a train wreck. From the moment I woke up, to now, it was a catastrophe. I woke up at 9:00 am to get ready for church like I always do on Sundays, but this morning turned into a nightmare. I got up at the sound of my alarm, headed to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. Dang I was a hot mess. Overnight my face had a breakout of the century (probably due to the McDonalds I had on Wednesday), my acne had tripled in size and turned my face into the color of a tomato; and my makeup wasn’t doing its job in covering it up either. My hair looked like it had been stuck in a blender for at least 3 hours, and the cute outfit that I had picked out to wear didn’t look so cute once I put it on. My church started at 10:00, and by 9:30 I still looked like a mess. On top of all of this stress, I had the worst headache imaginable.
Every shirt I picked up was either wrinkled or dirty because being a full time student plus part time employee makes clean room/clothes less of a priority. By 9:45 I had an okay church outfit on and my hair didn’t look so cave manish, my makeup still wasn’t covering up my blemishes as well as I wanted it to, but it looked decent. It’s 10:50 and I still haven’t brushed my teeth nor had I found my glasses, which I needed to calm down the headache. I told my dad and sister to head to church without me because I was going to be late; and since my father could sense the irritation exploding from my pores, he was kind enough to say “we can all be late together”.
I somewhat had my life together in time, and was ready to leave for church. I grabbed my glasses before heading out the door, and discovered that they had 3 huge smudges on both lenses making it much harder to see through than what I liked. With already being in a bad mood, I ripped the glasses off my face, threw them on the counter, headed outside with an attitude, and bruised my arm on the door in the process, which ticked me off even more.
We get to church and I immediately put a smile on my face, and pretended that everything was perfect, because that’s what you’re supposed to do right? Be happy while in the presence of other happy well put together Christians, right? Wrong, very very wrong. While my dad was up getting coffee, I started to cry, because I was sad, aggravated, and still had a headache/bruised arm. I never cry in public, mainly because my eyes become so swollen I look a little Asian. But while at church, feeling pretty broken and messy, I remembered something my Swaziland leader said to me while in Africa. “Courtney, it’s okay to be messy, it’s okay to be broken, you are allowed to be those things.”
I never thought that as a Christian I should be sad or broken, because I’m a Christian, and I’m supposed to be well put together. But this isn’t true, I had a rough morning for a 17 year old emotional female, and church is not the place to be pretending like I have my life together, because I don’t, and that’s okay. Church is a refuge, a safe haven, and a place to cry so hard you turn Asian. My day never got any better, I worked for 7 hours after church, I almost got in a car accident on the way home because the spider that I thought was outside of my window, was really inside, I had to head back to work because I left my wallet there, and I almost died while taking a shower because I’m just a clumsy human.
Today was a train wreck, and I didn’t handle it well, but I still felt God’s presence the entire time. I felt it through my tears at church as our opening speaker talked about rough times in life, and how God is with us through it all, I felt Him in the songs that my church decided to sing today, some of which I call me and God’s songs (that’s how much I love the songs). I also felt Him in the voice of the person who said I looked really cute today. I am a Christian, and I am also a human. I am by no means perfect or well put together, but I have a flawless Father who takes care of me in the good and bad, He takes care of all of us in the good and bad, and that is something that trumps the negative events that took place today. Knowing that God is with me literally 24/7, is the reason why today, really wasn’t so bad after all.
