A Masterpiece Within The Mess

By Chelsey Dankert

How do you encapsulate a lifetime of learning to a few short paragraphs and still maintain the integrity and sincerity of the journey?

I suppose one would start at the beginning.

I was born on November 8th, nineteen-eighty-… Maybe not that far into the beginning? I’ll try broader strokes - 

I was raised in a Christian home for all of the childhood I can remember. Sundays in church were a staple in our family; something to be expected and planned for, even if there were friends' sleepovers and I needed to be picked up on the way before anyone else was even awake. 

Like many who share a similar childhood, I’m sure we can recall the mural style Sunday school classrooms with Noah’s Ark painted with happy looking giraffes poking their heads out of the convenient skylight windows and the rainbow arching above as a symbol of God’s promises fulfilled. The cheerful songs about Father Abraham and the Christmas program where each child would have been given a role like Mary, the angel, or singing an off-key but likely joyful noise that resembled Silent Night. 

The neon green plastic chairs and short tables gave way to lines or circles of folding chairs, teen study Bibles, and louder worship music that was led by your peers, if you were lucky. If you were unlucky (I had ample servings of both!), perhaps the time of worship was brought to you by a scratched CD that sometimes skipped and you tried to not let it affect your clearly deep and meaningful time of singing while trying to get the attention of the cute boy across the room. 

Summer camps, outreach events at local football and baseball games, volunteering to teach Sunday school or rock babies in the nursery…

It was all a very natural progression in my contemporary (yet conservative) Christian home in the late 1990s and early 2000s. 

However, somewhere along the way I lost sight of the Who and His why, and began to feel more pressure to keep doing the what. 

My identity became so entangled with what I did, what I accomplished and what people thought of me. 

I believe there are a lot of layers that require gentle navigation; experiences in my childhood of unidentified and unspoken hurt, feelings of insignificance, and nuances to “try harder” and “be better” drove me into a mental and spiritual hamster wheel. 

Looking back it is difficult to untangle my actions from my motives, because I think I truly believed I was serving God whole-heartedly; I do not want to disvalue the transparent and honest moments from my youth, or limit God to my fragile, adolescent human frame. 

However, looking back I think I truly had misguided intentions that fueled more of my selfish ambitions than selflessly pursuing Christ. 

I longed to have the right answers because I often felt as if I needed to prove myself; as if I wasn’t exactly good enough as I was, so having the right answers would give me the benefit of anyone's doubts that I belonged in church. I wanted to be the center of attention because that may prove my worth, my value to belong in the group more than simply just showing up. 

I always felt like God was just a little disappointed in me. 

God loved me, because He had to. He tolerated me, but I could never be His favorite. 

I can recall a saying from back then that went something like “the way to have real joy is through J.O.Y.” - meaning that first you loved Jesus, then you loved Others, and if there is anything left, then I can love myself (You). That saying, among other well-intended mainstream Christian sayings, made me believe that I didn’t count, that I didn’t matter. And if I had the audacity to have any thoughts left over, I was not loving Jesus or others enough. And by extension, that I wasn’t enough.

But by constantly feeling the pressure of putting Jesus and others before myself, I was caving into the lie that I was unworthy of being loved for myself; that I was clearly not good enough on my own, “as is” condition. I had to do more good things, be more good things. 

So I put on my good-girl Sunday morning mask each week and tried to be what I thought I needed to be, to maybe be able to be someone’s other and finally feel the weight lifted off. I tried to say the right things at the right times, to wear the right clothing that wouldn’t be gossiped about behind my back, I tried to stay active in my church to set an example to the younger ones or to be acknowledged by the older ones. I tried not to screw up too badly. 

I tried. I really tried. 

For so long I tried. For so long I continued to carry this unspoken burden, like bricks in a backpack; I tried to just grin and bear it because I might be even less worthy if I can’t carry on. I might be seen as a fraud if I admit that the weight of it all is too much.

I tried. I really tried. 

And when I began to crumble and falter in my steps, I didn’t have anyone there to steady me, because to everyone around me, “I was fine.” 

In my attempts to prove myself, I inevitably isolated myself. 

In time, I stumbled and fell so far from what anyone thought possible. I had a lifetime of practical knowledge stored up, but I had very little real-life experience of depending on God. I was so numb and empty inside when my life fell apart that I was almost not even remorseful for my part in it all - because I had proven to myself my worst fear: I was unworthy. I was unlovable, especially at my worst; that love was conditional and when I screwed up so very badly, I was cut out and cut off. 

My choices and actions solidified that lie so deeply that I really stopped caring about what other people thought of me. Nothing really mattered to me. My life was a blur and as long as I woke up the next day, I had enough reason to keep going. There are blank spots in my memories from this season, some fuzzy collection of hours and days that I am not entirely sure happened, and if they happened, I am flabbergasted how I ever survived unscathed. 

I don’t believe that I ever decided to stop believing in God. I also don’t think I ever bargained for Him to get me out of my mess, because I understood just that - that this was my mess, my responsibility to clean up. 

Like a parent who closes a bedroom door while their child is having a temper tantrum, I believed that God had shut His heart to me; but also that He was waiting for me to realize my mistakes, clean up my room, and say sorry to Him.

So, I had to clean myself up. I had to work really hard to get back to doing the good things, then I can come out of this spiritual timeout. I steeled myself for that moment when I would feel God’s gaze on me and He would say “I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed.” 

The metaphorical bricks of “try harder” and “be better” made their way into my mental backpack once again. 

I’ll stop sleeping with my boyfriend. We’ll go to premarital counseling. We’ll go to church together. I’ll start an online Bible study. I’ll help lead the youth group. I’ll join the worship team. I’ll have babies naturally and breastfeed them and use cloth diapers; I will submit to my husband and try to be meek. I’ll really try to do the right things.  I’ll just keep trying until God is not as disappointed in me. 

This mindset seeped into my marriage and my motherhood, causing mounds of anxiety and daily “what if” battles that I rarely won with myself. 

What if he leaves me? What if he changes his mind or realizes that I am a fake? What if I can’t be a mother? What if I make too many mistakes? What if someone sees through my cracks and calls me out?

This fear was the opposite of paralyzing - it was energizing, motivating, and propelling me deeper into “more”. Beyond my margins and any healthy boundaries I kept pushing myself. The amount of negative self-talk I allowed for years and unrealistic expectations I set for myself finally started to wear me down. I was exhausted in every sense and even I could admit the effect it was taking in our home. 

I was crumbling again and no amount of color-coordinated schedules or alphabetized healthy snacks for my kids could save me. I was moving in a blur again, my entire body felt constantly heavy and fatigued. But if I just kept putting Jesus first, then others, then maybe I could be filled with whatever was left over.  

I knew I was saved and heaven was secured for me, but I was living very close to an earthly hell. In spite of all the “goodness” I had going for me, I was empty, again. I disappointed myself, again. I was not enough, again. 

I desperately wanted to believe that God was loving and that He would meet me in my mess; that I could somehow catch His attention and He would see how broken I truly was, that He could love me anyway. 

My whole life had been filled with intellectual and biblical knowledge - but I had yet to meet Yahweh face to face. 

I had yet to behold Him in a place so sincere, and raw, and genuine, that when I finally looked up, I could do nothing else but see my years of “all the good things” and realize that I had missed the Best Thing. This was not a shock and awe, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that hit like lightning to my soul. No, this started with a single step, one yes, then another. My journey from simply knowing the right answers to feeling the heartbeat of Jesus has been beautifully, and sometimes painfully, slow. 

My experience has been like a craftsman chipping away layers upon layers of old crusty paint. Some layers might even be retro wallpaper - who knows? I had spent the majority of my youth and adulthood covering up, so I’m sure there’s a bit of everything. Piece by piece, layer by each painful layer, Jesus has been gently removing all the things, places, and people that don't belong to me. 

I cannot say exactly when this process started, but I have seen evidence of His work in my life over the last several years. A definitive change that I can recall was experiencing the active work of the Holy Spirit - not limiting this element of the Trinity to being out-of-date or irrelevant in my walk with Christ. When I began to allow the Holy Spirit to move my heart into deeper prayer, and explore the gifts of the Spirit as applicable and available to me, I began to recognize God’s steadfast and eternal love was not conditional, nor is His mercy an act of obligation but more so  He has shown me that I am a vessel worthy of displaying His glory.

Jesus saw in me a masterpiece, something He was proud of. 

I am not called to perfection, but I have been called by a perfect Savior.