Muddling through the Messy Middle

I’m a wife, mother, homeschooler, teacher, and writer. I love stories so much that I often find myself viewing life through the lens of “fiction writer.” I often think about my own life as a story. The events that populate my past line up like a plot line. I plan my story. I’ve faced crisis moments. I’ve been forever changed by climactic events. Right now, I’d like to focus on one particular part of story. Let’s look at The Messy Middle. 

When writing fiction, the middle of the story is commonly where authors get lost in the process of writing. Even the most well planned stories can become muddled in the middle. Every story is propelled forward by a character’s struggle to achieve a goal. That struggle, that conflict, is absolutely necessary. Sometimes, when the story wanders in The Messy Middle, it’s because the author hasn’t laid enough conflict upon the character. Other times, there may be plenty of conflict, but the scenes don’t move the character toward their goal or closer to the thing they want. The latter is what I’d like to consider now, because I see conflict all over the pages of real-life stories. Sometimes that conflict feels never ending. The Messy Middle lingers. Goals, wants, and desires seem so far away. They may even be forgotten.

My longest Messy Middle was a span of five years. When my son was about one year old, my husband and I began to hope and pray for another child. After two miscarriages in the span of six months, my body began to deteriorate. I collected a list of seemingly unconnected symptoms. Chronic fatigue. Brain fog. Muscle pain. Joint pain. Migraines. Blurred vision. Digestive distress. Painful Bloating. The list went on and on.

For three years, every three months on average, I was diagnosed with a new autoimmune disease or other condition. Hashimoto’s Disease. Celiac Disease. Ulcerative Colitis. C-Diff. Carbohydrate Malabsorption. Small Intestine Bacterial Overgrowth (SIBO). Histamine Intolerance. I had a growing list of food sensitivities. By the end of three years, my body reacted to almost everything I put in my mouth. “Loss of oral tolerance,” I was told. But why? No one could answer that question. No one could tell me why my body was suddenly and spectacularly failing. Talk about a Messy Middle. I felt hopeless.

Around this three year mark, my colon began to bleed profusely. My “loss of oral tolerance” expanded to include all food. I couldn’t even take a sip of water without excruciating pain. The day my husband took me to the hospital, I cried all the way there. I didn’t want to go. Even with so much physical conflict laid upon me, I didn’t want to admit that I needed help. I didn’t want the kind of help the hospital had to offer. After being admitted, I stayed for twelve days. While there, my holistic nutritionist paid me a visit. She said, “Jen, this doesn’t make any sense. For years, you’ve been doing all the right things. You should be getting better, not worse. You shouldn’t be here. I think it’s time to test your house for mold.”

Test. For. Mold. This proved to be a complicated request. We did not own our home. My husband is a pastor. The house was owned by the church that he pastored at the time. When I was released from the hospital, I told my husband about the possibility of toxic mold as a root cause for all of my symptoms. I asked him if we could test the house for mold. He said no. There was no visible reason to look. Plus, he was afraid that if we did look, it would put up walls between us and the church. Again, I felt hopeless. My personal Messy Middle did not seem to have an end.

Three days after our conversation, while I lay in bed, sewage began to pour from the light fixture outside my bedroom door. It was literally raining down conflict upon our crisis. But with the advent of this particular problem, God provided a way through. Because of that very visual leak from the upstairs bathroom, my husband and I had a reason and a place to look for toxic mold in our environment. We began with a plumber. He diagnosed the problem. The pipe from the toilet to the main plumbing stack had been installed with a backwards pitch. Every time the toilet was flushed, a little bit of sewage leaked over the phalange into the ceiling cavity. It wasn’t visible until it was.

After the diagnosis of this plumbing problem, we tested the house for toxic mold. The results were alarming. We moved out of the house while we collected more data. The house was remediated. We tested again. The results were worse than before. We met with a mycologist (mold expert) who told us that remediation will often make things worse by stirring up mold spores without proper containment. He also told us that all of our stuff, which was still in the house, was covered in mycotoxins (the toxic byproducts of mold). There is nothing in the world known to denature mycotoxins, so if we were to move our things out of the house, we would essentially bring the mold with us. We made the tough decision to part with everything we owned.

Here’s the thing. I told you that my Messy Middle lasted five long years. But the climactic event of this story (us finding the mold and leaving the house) occurred around the three year mark. At that point, I naively thought that my Messy Middle was about to end. I praised God again and again for showing us the way out. But my Messy Middle wasn’t over. I didn’t know then that it would last two more years.

After leaving the house, my family moved into an empty apartment with a bag of groceries, a few toys, and three changes of clothes each. We had almost nothing. We slept on the floor for months. Would our relationship with the church recover? How would we financially recover? Would I ever physically recover? There was so much unknown. We had so many questions. Even though we found the mold, we could not seem to find our way out of The Messy Middle. If anything, the cloudiness felt worse. It was dense. Heavy. Nearly suffocating. We muddled through, sometimes with more fear than hope.

Let’s loop back to the analogy of an author writing a story. The author will eventually find balance. They will find a way out, or even just stumble upon it. However they get through The Messy Middle, there is resolution on the other side. My resolution, the end to my Messy Middle, came five years after it began. My resolution involved a cross country move, a new house, new contents graciously provided by generous brothers and sisters in Christ, and complete physical healing. It took longer than I wanted, but every cloud that disoriented my Messy Middle was cleared in time.

Who resolved my Messy Middle? Did I find my own way out? Did my husband and I clear the fog? Not at all. God is the author of my story and yours. He doesn’t wander through The Messy Middle looking for the way out. He sees every story from beginning to end. He already knows what is and what will be. He’s writing for our good. I believe that sometimes God writes us into The Messy Middle. At other times, he uses The Messy Middle of our own creation. (Sin leads us to create our own messes.) Either way, God is with us in the mess. He writes the way out. Sometimes he chooses to let us linger. No matter the timing, no matter the resolution, I trust that God, our loving creator and father, writes for our benefit.

In my own Messy Middle, I saw God work miracles. He worked until my trust surpassed my fear. He healed me. He provided for my family’s every need. I don’t know why God left me in The Messy Middle for so long. I may not ever know this side of heaven, but I trust that the story he’s writing is for my good. It’s good, even when it hurts. It’s good, even when it’s heavy. It’s for my good, always.

Maybe you haven’t faced a big, life-altering Messy Middle yet. Or maybe you’re in one right now. If you’ve come to the other side of one, you can look back and see your path through the darkness to where you are now. In The Messy Middle, it’s easy to despair. When the way out is obscured, it’s natural to feel stuck or trapped. You are not alone in your pain or uncertainty. God, the author of your days, wants to be in a relationship with you. He wants to be close to you (even if sin created The Messy Middle). God does not turn from you or leave you alone in the mess. You are greatly, infinitely loved. God is writing your unique story for your good.

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