A Beautiful Mess: An Interview with Kristin Ritzau

From the moment you step into Kristin Ritzau’s home nestled against the foothills of Los Angeles in a quaint town called, Monrovia, you recognize immediately that she is a woman who knows how to cultivate beauty.

This beauty flourishes in the corners and retreats of her home; for example, the white ladder propped beside her bathroom sink with a spray of wild flowers crawling over it. This beauty also expresses itself in the way she cooks. On our first evening in her home, she prepared homemade rosemary bread and jambalaya, a stew of spicy shrimp and sausage, jumbled with colorful vegetables as vibrant as her own personality.

When you push the door open of Kristin’s home you are immediately greeted with a big “hello” and “Come on in!” usually from the back of her house where she is either tossing together the rest of dinner, or dealing with one of the many demands of running an urban farm.

And that is what is most remarkable about the woman behind the book, A Beautiful Mess: the beauty of her home, her life, and her person is not finely manicured and glossy like so many of the female icons who strive to be Martha Stewart. The beauty that Kristin creates and radiates comes out of the soil of the earth, the reality that we are not perfect and she is not perfect, nor has she any desire to convince you otherwise.

This is perhaps why she and her husband decided to be urban farmers. She enjoys the origin of things, the bed rock dirt and grit of life, and she enjoys cultivating it, transforming it, and creating out of it something lovely and life-giving, something redeemed.

How fitting then that her ministry and first book would be dedicated to helping women turn the brokenness, dirt, and grit of their own lives into something beautiful. I sat down with Kristin to discuss her first book named after her ministry, A Beautiful Mess.

How did A Beautiful Mess, the book, come about?

In 2006, I opened my home to lead a small group with a handful of other women and what happened there changed our lives accidently.

I had just finished grad school at Fuller Theological Seminary and taken two classes: one on spiritual disciplines and the other on how to care for people who are hurting in your ministry. I designed the small group to revolve around those two ideas.

By creating a safe space to share authentically and asking big questions about the patterns of our lives, we started to form a very different community of women than any of us had experienced before. By giving up control, the Spirit moved and no one could have predicted what A Beautiful Mess has become.

When we faced the most honest versions of ourselves and each other, all we could do was appreciate each woman and journey to find a more authentic way of being with one another … thus, A Beautiful Mess was created.

You’re very honest in this book about the “messes” in your own life that you have striven to turn into beauty. Were you nervous at all about sharing some of the details of your life with strangers?

For sure. I’m putting myself out there in regards to my relationships with loved ones, my friends, my husband, and my inner monologues. It’s not easy to do knowing that it can be judged. But I know that the message is more important that my ego.

The story about living for everyone else’s expectations and learning to examine the culture and church around me were too important to keep to myself. I know that there are women out there wondering if there is something more — so I picked up the pen and kept going. At this point, I’m honored that people are reading it and overall, women are finding their own voices in this journey and that really does take my anxiousness away.

In chapter 5, “Balance vs Rhythm,” you turn conventional wisdom on it’s ear when you challenge your readers to let go of the idea of “balance” and embrace the rhythms of their lives, instead. Why is it, do you think, that our culture clings so adamantly to this idea of “balance”? What appeals to us about it?

It’s the idea that we always need something more, that we’re never enough. At some point, it started driving me crazy. I was doing everything to achieve these unrealistic expectations and then when I didn’t meet them, I felt so guilty.

I’m not (and I won’t be) the perfect wife, daughter, sister, friend, etc., but the culture around me kept telling me that if I play the right role in a certain way I could maintain this idea of balance. The reality was I couldn’t and my motivation was not one of working with the rhythm of my life, where I can’t always be in control.

[Trying to be balanced] was like being trapped in a current of constantly swimming upstream versus learning to flow with the waves. The waves will always come, but it was my approach that was off kilter.

In your chapter, “Awareness: The Emotional Journey,” you talk about the way in which women often times swallow up their emotions by always attributing everything to God. For example, by saying, “Oh, I had nothing to do with it. It was all God.”

You argue that’s it not that God doesn’t deserve the glory, it’s just that we are putting the “implications of our emotions” in the wrong place. This truth really resonated with me and I wondered how you came to understand this life-altering shift in the language we use about our emotions.

It is a pet peeve of mine when people say, “I just need to get out of the way for God.” I understand the intention behind this statement, but if we are supposed to be serving God in this life and learning more about how we can be our truest selves in Christ, why are we “getting out of the way” of our own lives?

It was when I showed-up for all that was around me that I started to see what the messes were all about. I didn’t try to clean or avoid them anymore, rather I dealt with them.

There is a lot of tension in doing that because when I get out of the way for God, it’s so much easier to say, “OK God, You’re taking too long. I’ll do it.” And it becomes this game of going back and forth. Instead, I learned to take myself out of this maddening game and started to actually see myself for who I really was. I didn’t like what I saw because my foundation had been built with a false self.

I learned that Jesus was right there with me, breathing life in to me, not saying “Kristin, be invisible.” He saw me and wanted me to see myself as He did and the layers began to slough off.

That empowerment led me to look at others the way Jesus did too. I reconciled myself to God, and honestly the hardest part was learning to love myself and then I was able to shift to see the world with a different lens: one of grace and compassion and love because that is what the gospel is all about.

In your chapter about sexual self-care, you say some pretty radical things. Things that are authentic and much more honest than the normal “purity” talks we have been bombarded with in church. In your opinion, why is it that so few people are speaking honestly to women about healthy sexuality?

Sadly the church has not guided this discussion in a healthy manner. There are not a lot of people who can define their own sexuality, let alone healthy sexuality. We are sexual beings. God created us as such. But so often we leave this discussion up to dysfunctional sex-ed classes or youth pastors who are not equipped to handle the depth and breadth of this issue.

We also have delineated sexual issues to married-couples-only in the Christian culture, so we tell kids: don’t, don’t, don’t and then when the honeymoon comes, you’re just supposed to understand all that is happening. OR you feel like a slut because you’ve crossed these so-called lines long before your wedding day. It’s a very convenient paradigm to be stuck in, but we need more discussion around this topic.

I say in the book that marriage should be the “if,” not our own sexuality and I believe in that. Marriage is not for everyone, but that doesn’t mean that you are exempt from how to process how you were made. We need a healthier conversation around this topic and the chapter about sexuality and sharing what happened to me is my attempt to start that conversation.

When women pick up your book and begin to read, how would you like them to approach the conversation you’re starting with them?

First of all, I would just like to say thank you for picking it up. There are so many books out there and people are bombarded by all sorts of things that keep them occupied these days, so the thought that you would read it is very honoring.

This conversation is one that I believe a lot of women are wondering about how to begin. Society has told us there is no other way than to be discontent, but this is an attempt to start to shift that thinking.

With that in mind, I would let them know I hope they go in with an open mind to this conversation because there is another way. One where you spend time getting to know yourself and learning that the Holy Spirit wants you to invest time and energy into your life. When that happens, the way you function will be more authentic and real, and not pretend.

I would also encourage people to read it with a friend or in a book club. We’re not meant to do everything by ourselves, so this is a ripe opportunity to practice.

Why do you believe women need to hear the message of A Beautiful Mess?

A woman told me once that she loved the title because “beautiful is what every woman wants to be in their own rite, and a mess is what every woman feels like.” The truth is we are both all of the time, but we don’t take the time to sit in that truth. I want women to have a safe place to become the most honest versions of themselves.

Authenticity is a huge theme in the book and I wonder what it would look like if we experienced the freedom to not have to perform and feel OK with one another and as individuals. There is enough to fight against that we don’t need to battle against ourselves and the message of A Beautiful Mess gives insight into that tension of living your life differently.

It’s my account of ceasing my chasing after all of the unhealthy patterns in my life and finding myself enough, OK, and loved. Hopefully, other women will have those same realizations in their own journeys. Let me know how you like it too!

Kristin Ritzau earned her Master of Arts in Christian Leadership from Fuller Theological Seminary. She is a spiritual director, writer, speaker, and recovering perfectionist. She works in Student Life at Azusa Pacific University and is a blogger for Conversant Life. She lives outside of Los Angeles with her husband on their urban homestead. You can learn more about A Beautiful Mess retreats and workshops at her website.

Christin Taylor lives in Bellingham, Washington with her husband, Dwayne, her daughter, Noelle, and her son, Nathan. She runs The Blank Page Writing Workshops online, and her first book, Shipwrecked in Los Angeles, is forthcoming from Wesleyan Publishing House early 2012. To learn more about Christin, her workshops, and her writing go to www.christintaylor.com.

Photo of Kristin Ritzau copyright @ 2010 Megan Lundgren. All rights reserved.