Chaos, Then Calm - Issue #4
Paradox
Much like tolerating uncertainty is the prerequisite to overcoming anxiety, it seems that tolerating chaos is the prerequisite to calm. The way of peace requires a battle. If you won't face the hard conversation, you won't enjoy the peace and calm of healthy relationship. If you run from the chaos, you won't find the calm. You'll just keep running and running and running.
Engage
I was saying this to myself over the last week or so, as things got crazier and crazier. "Must endure the chaos before it's calm again." But I've realized it's a principle of life. And it's a bit more than just enduring, but engaging and contending with it. With the house, I look at the chaos around me, feel quite overwhelmed, and then pick up a broom and sweep up a mess or tape up a box and start filling it.
But there are other parts of life where this is true. Parenting, for instance.
I'm not a parent, but I have enough nieces and nephews around to know that this is the very definition of parenting children. Children are nothing but chaos in the flesh. They ruin plans, make monstrous messes, impede a good night's sleep, destroy property, get sick, defy authority, and a whole host of chaotic things.
The worst parents defect and choose the path of least resistance so they don't have to face the chaos. What they reap is heartbreak when their children go off into the world incomplete, stunted, and creating more chaos because they never learned calm from parents. The best parents engage with the chaos, and fight for their children and sometimes with their children, insisting that they do what is right, and begging God to plant a will to do what's right inside their hearts. Those parents reap the calm of knowing there are more lovely humans out in the world creating order wherever they go.
It's Always Worth It
I know it is, because I've experienced it. Not with the house. Not quite yet. But I will, because it's happened before. Once I've moved into our new house and conquered that level of chaos, I'll show you all some pictures of the finished product. Meanwhile the photo below is the only snippet of calm and order in my entire house. You really have to relish those snippets when you find them.
So, go forth and contend with the chaos. I'll cheer you on. Until next week.
