Divine Chaos
November 7th, 2009
Happy Saturday Everyone!
I hope your weekend is wonderful. I intend to stay home and catch up on some laundry while I watch Scott finish my laundry room. I never thought I’d be so excited to wash clothes again!! Who’d a thunk it?!
Yesterday I was looking out into the woods in my back yard and soaking up the gorgeousness that is nature. The tree limbs all sway, naked in the breeze. The light gray of their limbs and twigs standing out against the darkness that is the trunk. The center. The stability. How majestic are these trees standing so tall and proud, reaching up toward the sky through all that Mother Nature can throw at them. Providing warmth and protection and shelter to all creatures in need, never discriminating against any.
How amazing are these trees.
Then my focus wandered down to the ground where all the chaos lives. The entire floor of the woods is coated with the thickest layer of orange and brown leaves. There are sticks and limbs protruding from the sea of leaves, poking through the surface with gray, brittle, papery, wooden fingers as though reaching back up in pleas to the towering forest kings who dropped them there half hazardly.
“What chaos,” I thought. “What a giant mess of elements, piled around the base of all these trees. Someone really aught to clean all that mess up.”
And this is when it hit me. I know this is common knowledge. I know you all probably already know this. I already knew this too. It’s a perfect metaphor for life though, so I feel compelled to share the thought.
What would become of my woods without the chaos? If there were no sticks and twigs and limbs on the ground, the sea of leaves would pack together with no air circulating through the lower layers. This would lead to mold instead of decomposition. It’s through the decomposition that the leaves AND the sticks break down into their original elements and feed the majestic trees from which they’ve fallen, along with every other plant that is growing on the forest floor.
Without the fallen limbs and leaves, all the tiny critters that scamper around collecting seeds and nuts in preparation for the coming winter would be exposed to all the predators that want to eat them. Without the layer of mulch against the ground from the previous year’s limbs and leaves, the worms and bugs and spiders would have nowhere to live and thrive. Without that life thriving, the lives of the frogs and larger spiders and salamanders and snakes would all be threatened.
The greatest thing, I think, about the chaos out there, is that the chaos that the trees facilitate… once fallen, used, moved around, decomposed and re-covered, all that chaos becomes the nourishment that encourages the trees to repeat their cycle. To recreate the chaos that brings order.
Because that’s what it does, bring order. All that mess of chaos that only looks like a mess of chaos, is order in disguise. It’s help and richness and abundance disguised as chaos. In reality, there is no chaos. Life only appears as chaos because, like me looking into the woods, we can only see where we think the chaos began, where we think the chaos will end, and the mess it appears to leave behind.
In truth, that great, big, chaotic mess that’s left behind in your life is nourishing your other layers. It’s bringing you truth and honesty and life. The trick is, you have to be able to look beyond the messy appearance and see the order. Even if you can’t see it clearly, simply knowing it’s there helps to suck much of the urgency and fear out of the chaos.
The best way to see the order within your chaos is to mentally go back through the timeline of your life and find your previous chaos. Find a previous time when you felt frazzled and overwhelmed. A time when it seemed like there was no end to the crap that life was just dumping on top of you. Now, find the order. Where did that chaos take you? Who did you meet? What worked out? Did it turn out better in the end than you expected? Are there STILL things that happen today that you know are related to what happened to you back then?
I’ll give you a quick example. At 19 years old, I was unemployed, stuck in a marriage with a man who was an alcoholic and drug addict, and living at my in-law’s house with no bright spot in sight. I felt hopeless and helpless and useless and depressed. What chaos and fear and pain I was in. This chaos lead me to apply for a job two miles up the road. It was a reason to be out of the house, some pocket money that I didn’t have, and maybe I’d find a little self respect. I found all those things, then the end of my marriage, and then the love of my life. It all fell into place but it required the chaos to create the order.
Finding the order that’s come out of the chaos that was my life, has saved my life. Seeing that all the “bad” things were there to morph into great things made the memories of the bad a little less painful. It made the chaos a little more tolerable. It made me a little less resentful, a little at a time until all the resentment was replaced by gratitude. How can I resent a past that lead me here? How can I not be grateful for everything that happened to me previously that turned me into the woman that I am?
The trees don’t resent the autumn that makes their leaves and limbs fall turning them into taller, stronger, and more beautiful beacons of nature. If they did hold resentment and tried to stop the chaos from happening, it would only make the chaos more painful and obvious, and in turn would hinder their growth.
Take solace in the fact that the chaos in your life is loving order in disguise. Riding out the storm becomes so much easier when you are looking for the order instead of dwelling on the chaos. Storms can certainly rage, but the aftermath can be pure bliss if you allow it.
Enjoy Your Weekend,
∞ EL
Subscribe in a reader
OR
By Email
I effing LOVE YOU!
LOL! Backatcha Babe :)