Are they really beautiful?

They are beautiful, aren’t they?   

This is just the “after” picture. You didn’t see the mess. 

Let me tell you about it. 

Do you know anything about making/melting chocolate?  It can be highly annoying. 

Making the inside is the easy part to these. Melt chocolate, mix things and then cool for hours. 

They have to be cool to make into nice round balls.  

But too warm they turned into a sticky mess.

But too cold, impossible to dig out with a scoop. 

I had all the temperatures this morning. Cookie scoop keep falling apart because it was too hard to scoop. And then too warm and sticking to all the fingers. Chocolate everywhere. 

This is the real. 
Is that too messy for you?

Don’t miss the chocolate handle. 

Easier not to know, right. It may even make you turn away and think, “ yeah, I don’t need that”. You are thinking I licked my hands, aren’t you?  I didn’t, but now you are judging me 😆. 

But it doesn’t stop there. 

It starts to looking better. But if you heat the chocolate coating too long, it will harden too fast. If you don’t heat it enough, it will be lumpy. And if the chocolate has sat in the store too long, if might not even melt at all. 

If the chocolate balls are too cold and the coating too warm, they will look all beautiful and then seconds later, it will crack like ice. 

You can try to hide the imperfections with the white drizzle or it may actually get worse while it clumps up and refuse to drizzle. 

Do they still have value?

If I was to sell them, they have less value because they are imperfect. And now you know all the “dirt” on them. Cracked and broken. Way less value. 

But the one that created them , they know what they are made of … the same stuff they always are and that they are delicious. They have no less yumminess. In fact they are even more beautiful because they know all the little tiny things that made them into who they are. 

You get where I’m going with this?  

He knows. He is your Creator. Messy, broken, temperamental but YET He loves you and knows your value. He sees how all the tiny things are making you into who you are. And you are beautiful. Don’t allow others to judge you for the mess you are because what other people think about you does NOT taint what your Creator thinks. Oh, how He loves you.

In all honesty, I have been struggling to see what God has been doing in my life. I keep looking behind me and instead of just being content right where I’m at right now. 

I have had to apologize more times than I want to admit this week. 

So. Now. I have a choice. 

I can grieve every moment for Zuri and in the pain fail to notice the beauty of my dearest Josie. 

I can grieve relationships that are broken and fail to invest in my dear faithful husband right in front of me.  

I can throw temper tantrums about how my best friend moved away and fail to see how God has given me an extra best friend. 

I can feel like God is not present in my current issues of creating miracles in all the things that I deem as urgent and miss His little love notes in His word. 

I can focus on how everyone is having a grand time doing all the things and focusing on how they have it all together and I don’t but then miss how God is showing up in my monotonous every day life. 

I don’t want to do that!

I do not want to miss a single blessing that God is sending this way because my attention is focusing on the wrong things. 

Help me, Jesus!  

Help us, Jesus!

So tell me about how God is working through you. Even in your mess. I don’t want your perfect. Just honesty. The real stuff. Like is your freezer full and overflowing like mine? Or did you just kill 20 spiders in your basement like I did?  And can you find God’s blessings in the middle of it all?  

And if. 

Just if you can handle my messy honest chocolate pictures.. I would love to put your name (local friends obviously) in a drawing to win a box of perfectly imperfect mocha truffles to someone that can be honest with me.