There's Only So Much Mess One Can Absorb

6 min 54 sec: app reading time

March 14, 2025

Dear Friend:

Grace Leuenberger's post inspired me this morning. It was originally posted on 04/06/2022.

I admit that I'm emotionally burned out by what we face as a culture. As a pastor, I hear personal stories, and they touch me as a human. The cultural and political noise of the moment compounds this. I read headlines and try to focus on the essentials of human existence.

Grace Leuenberger is a young woman in her early 30s. She was born and raised in rural Western Pennsylvania, home to rolling farmland, weird casseroles, questionable accents, and the most loyal people, according to her description. She was the youngest of four with three older brothers, so any humor you’ll find in her writings can be credited back to the fact that she had to develop some survival mechanism to escape the loathsome label of “annoying little sister.”

She moved eight times in her first twenty-seven years of life and now resides in the beautiful and quirky town of Kent, Ohio, with her golden retriever, Tess, and her growing collection of vintage postcards. She loves long-distance running, hiking, cooking and baking, learning how to play her banjo, and spending time with her family. Her writings can be found at this link, Mockingbird.

Today is my Friday before my Sabbath rest on Saturday tomorrow.

Grace wrote this post almost three years ago at the beginning of her Lenten season. She put into words what I felt yesterday and this morning. God spoke to me through Grace's post.

Here are Grace's thoughts:

Over the last few months, I’ve started to describe how I feel using the illustration of a "ShamWow."

In case you haven’t heard of it, an overly excited man with a heavy Brooklyn accent named ‘Vince Offer’ introduced the "ShamWow" in a now-famous 90-second 2007 infomercial spot. Its description is as follows: “The ShamWow is the original super absorbent multi-purpose cleaning shammy towel cloth that holds up to 10x its weight in liquid.” “Doesn’t drip, doesn’t make a mess!” claims Vince.

If only the same could be said for me.

Lately, phrases like “I’m fine,” or “I’m tired,” or “I’m feeling burned out” have begun to lack enough oomph to express the varying states of my interior life.

That’s where "ShamWow" comes in.

Some days, I’m like a dry ShamWow — able to absorb the spills of the day, whatever they may be. I’d answer emails without irritation, reply to texts, and clean up my dog’s shredded bits of her toy without complaining.

“Doesn’t drip, doesn’t make a mess!”

Other days, I’m a bit more like a "ShamWow" that was used to dry all the camping dishes.

My smartwatch tells me to monitor my stress levels and suggests I “relax with a breathing activity.” My eyes become alarmingly baggy, and my coffee cup becomes a holy grail. But I keep going. I feel soggy and am most definitely weighed down, but I have lived up to my product description: I can hold up to ten times my weight in (emotional) liquid!

But ever since Lent began, I’ve felt more like a "ShamWow" at the bottom of a deep, dark lake that is stuck under an old tire.

I’ve come to realize that it takes a lot of strength to wring out the Super Absorbent Multi-Purpose Cleaning Shammy Towel Cloth that is my burned-out brain. And I sure don’t have it.

I do not like feeling wrung out or worn down. I enjoy being efficient, productive, and prolific.

I want to be “durable and long-lasting, ready for any job!” as Vince attests in the infomercial. I want to be a person whose actions inspire others to utter the ShamWow tagline: “You’ll be saying ‘WOW’ every time!”

I do not want to be seen with the distinctly Lenten lens that reminds me and everyone else that I am limited, dependent, assailable … human.

There’s only so much mess one can absorb.

I’ve been reading the book of Ezekiel since the start of Lent. And let me tell you: it’s been a slog. Most days, I open my Bible and let out a sigh. “Here we go again.” The repeated passages about sin and rebellion have not exactly released me from my Lenten funk.

My prayer journal reads the same each day. “Yeah, God, this is another doozy. I haven’t got much to say here.”

Ezekiel is tough.

There’s part of me that wants to stop reading it and throw in the (super absorbent) towel. But as I’ve scribbled those repetitive and frankly complaining prayers each morning this Lent, I’ve found there’s good news in it that I need to soak up this Lent.

Throughout Ezekiel, God’s people are shown to be disoriented, disobedient, and living in a land of dusty, dry bones.

For years — generations — everything has been a mess, and one of their own making, at that. “Our transgressions and our sins are heavy on us, and we are wasting away because of them! How can we survive?” reads Ezekiel 33:10-TM

I have repeatedly seen myself in the story — the story I have read with disdain and dislike. If I’m being honest, I don’t enjoy reading Ezekiel because I don’t want to admit that if left to my own devices, I’d waste away, too.

These last few weeks, I’ve felt like a mess, too. I have barely read or written anything. My creative capacity is the lowest it’s been in a long time. What I say next might sound strange, but I mean it: Thanks be to God.

I say that because I think my burned-out, weighed-down state is bringing me back to God.

My buzzing brain allows me to be creative, constructive, and a contributor, but those very traits can also keep me from calling on and communing with God.

Eugene Peterson said that the Sabbath was an “uncluttered time and space to distance ourselves from the frenzy of our activities so we can see what God has been and is doing.” My "ShamWow" brain has needed a Lenten-length Sabbath.

So, while reading through Ezekiel has wrung me out a bit, I want to keep reading.

I want to, as Eugene Peterson writes, “see what God has been and is doing.”

Though I’ve always been a reader who adamantly believes in not skipping ahead in a book, I have heard that there’s more to the story than testimonies of transgressions and descriptions of dry bones. Someone spoiled the ending of Ezekiel for me many years ago, and I’m glad they did.

Indeed, this Lent has not felt super hopeful to me. I am tired. I am troubled to be living in a messy world of war, climate change, and a million other matters that weigh 10 times too heavy on my mind.

Strangely enough, the book of Ezekiel is wringing out my hopelessness.

That book I’ve been slogging through is slowing me down enough to see that perhaps God was there, here, the whole time. The story of Lent does not end with death but with life — with breath. The grave did not hold Christ; he rose again.

And because of that, we will live with him again, too. And that truth really does make me say WOW every time.

"God grabbed me. God’s Spirit took me up and set me down in the middle of an open plain strewn with bones. He led me around and among them—a lot of bones! There were bones all over the plain—dry bones, bleached by the sun.

He said to me, “Son of man, can these bones live?”

I said, “Master God, only you know that.”

He said to me, “Prophesy over these bones: ‘Dry bones, listen to the Message of God!’”

God, the Master, told the dry bones, “Watch this: I’m bringing the breath of life to you, and you’ll come to life. I’ll attach sinews to you, put meat on your bones, cover you with skin, and breathe life into you. You’ll come alive, and you’ll realize that I am God!”

I prophesied just as I’d been commanded. As I prophesied, there was a sound and, oh, rustling! The bones moved and came together, bone to bone. I kept watching. Sinews formed, then muscles on the bones, skin stretched over them. But they had no breath in them.

He said to me, “Prophesy to the breath. Prophesy, son of man. Tell the breath, ‘God, the Master, says, Come from the four winds. Come, breath. Breathe on these slain bodies. Breathe life!’”

So I prophesied, just as he commanded me. The breath entered them, and they came alive! They stood up on their feet, a vast army.

Then God said to me, “Son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel. Listen to what they’re saying: ‘Our bones are dried up, our hope is gone, there’s nothing left of us.’

“Therefore, prophesy. Tell them, ‘God, the Master, says: I’ll dig up your graves and bring you out alive—O my people! Then I’ll take you straight to the land of Israel. When I dig up graves and bring you out as my people, you’ll realize that I am God. I’ll breathe my life into you, and you’ll live. Then I’ll lead you straight back to your land, and you’ll realize that I am God. I’ve said it, and I’ll do it. God’s Decree.’” (Ezekiel 37:1-14-TM)

I know this is an ancient apocalyptic prophecy.

According to most scholars, Ezekiel was written between 593 and 571 BC, during the Jews' Babylonian exile. The promise was fulfilled in ca. 538 when they were allowed to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple. God was faithful in fulfilling his promise even though the "400 dark" years before the arrival of Jesus as "Immanuel" would prove to be a return to the religious slavery of their past lives.

What speaks to me today from Ezekiel is not the "illusion" of freedom from my present burnout but the trust in a God who is journeying with me regardless of my imperfection and burnout brain and emotions.

I hope this post spoke to you as it did to me.

With you on your journey,

Pastor Harold