Messed Up

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A few weeks ago, someone on Facebook mentioned Rich Mullins. Rich Mullins, people! I used to have a “best of” cassette with a bunch of his songs. (Actually, I may still have it somewhere – I just don’t have anything to play a cassette tape on anymore.)

But that random mention on FB sent me on a Rich Mullins jag. The man had some really powerful music. “Calling Out Your Name” absolutely sends me soaring in worship. “We Are Not as Strong as We Think We Are” moves me deeply. And I spent a couple days driving around with hands raised in praise (well, one hand up, one still on the wheel) while listening to “If I Stand”.

Googling the songs again sent me also to articles talking about Mullins himself, someone I didn’t really know much about. I knew he died relatively young in a car crash (in 1997 at the age of 41). I also learned that he went to college at Friends University in Wichita, my hometown – which explained his reference to “the Keeper of the Plains” which I always wondered about. And I also saw comments implying that he might have been a closeted homosexual. Interesting.

Digging more into that, I read many remarks from his friends talking about how “weird” he was. How “messed up” he was. They didn’t elaborate, but these were close friends who stood by him throughout his weird, messed up life, so they clearly saw goodness in him, too. No, not just goodness – greatness.

If I’d read this stuff many years ago, back when I was listening to that cassette tape all the time in my van with my girls in car seats in the back, I think I would have become very disillusioned. It would have upset me greatly that this guy who wrote music that brought me so close to God had issues. It would have discredited the music in my mind. A messed-up person can’t lead me to Jesus.

But oh . . . then real life happened. And God showed up. And I know so much better now. Now I realize that it’s only a messed-up person who can lead me to Jesus. Only a person who knows they’re messed up.

Because y’all -- we are ALL messed up.

All of us. Every human. We all have secrets in our closets and scars on our psyches and dark places in our hearts and vast, gaping holes in our souls that God declines to fill until we’re willing for him to fill them with himself.

I occasionally have the urge to inform the young people in my life of this fact. I mean, I say it – “Everybody is messed up, you know” -- and they nod their agreement. But they don’t really know it yet. They can't really comprehend such horrors about their greatest role model . . . the person they think walks on water . . . the person they want to grow up to be. They would be stunned to know what goes on in the privacy of that person's house and mind and heart. I think only God is aware when someone is really ready to deal with that inside knowledge about humanity because it can be devastating.

But while this devastating knowledge once made me despair, it now gives me great relief. It lowers expectations for my own performance, for one thing. But it also continually draws me to God. I’m so messed up. The only way my life can mean anything is if he makes it happen. Make it so, Lord.

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