Emotions were right at the surface yesterday morning as I walked into the MOPS meeting. Chaos from that morning seemed to follow me in the door and as I said hello to friends I attempted to shake off my Tuesday morning blahs.
I felt especially hormonal as I tried to keep from a complete emotional meltdown during the Beautiful Mess video that our table leaders so graciously put together.
I'm the mom that walks into a room where my kids are playing and immediately comments on the mess they are making. Comment is a slight understatement. I get a little irrational about it. Do I see them having a good time? Using their imaginations? Getting along for once? Nope. I immediately see the damage. I see toys, clutter, and bedding -- in all the wrong order. I love order, and I hate disorder. Can you tell?
Anyway, so the video is playing, and I get it. Somehow in the middle of seeing Amy Powell without her makeup, and a nice view of someone's incredibly messy living room, I got it. I saw it, I should say.
I saw beauty.
It was real. That seemingly nonsensical "theme" for this year's MOPS was not the lie that this order-lover secretly deemed it. And I cried a little. I wanted to cry a lot but then I might have been labeled the "cryer" at my new table and I didn't need that reputation following me around all year...
And then, as if my mind had not been challenged enough, our speaker was introduced and began to say stuff that I'm sure was because she'd been talking to my husband.
(Right?? Did anyone else feel this way?)
She asked: "What is God teaching you about you, when you can't control everything you wish you could control?"
Well, let's see, Susan. God is teaching me that I lack quite a bit of patience, I have anger issues apparently, and I seem to need my life to look orderly, in order to feel that it is orderly. When in reality, it is very disorderly.
And then that quiet voice spoke truth to me through Susan's words and my own mind's ramblings; God is there in the mess. He loves the disorder in my life, not because it's chaos, because He does not see it as such. He sees my kids playing, and enjoying the toys and home He's blessed them with, and He smiles.
The chaos that I so often see happening around me is, in fact, not chaos at all. But a beautiful orchestration of God's love for me. My children. My blessings. My joy.
And today I choose to take that truth, and hold it tight. This may have been a lesson that you all have learned a long time ago, but this mother of three is having an epiphany. My sense of control is an illusion. And the "control" and "order" that I so desperately want, is not at all what God has for me. Or what I should seek for myself.
He has something so much better. He has given me life. And life, my dear, is very messy.
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