“The woman’s eyes almost instantly became wide with amazement. ‘Your house must be chaotic, all those children!’
I didn’t contradict her. She’s not exactly wrong.
Sometimes I wonder what people imagine my life must be like. Do they picture Lord of the Flies or something like the Lost Boys of Neverland? Or a scene from Annie, with little girls scrubbing and cleaning in song? What kind of chaos do they suppose it is like?
I won’t lie, sometimes our lives are intensely overwhelming — hair pulling, the mad scramble of trying to keep up. Loud, fun, frustrating. Loving, fighting, messy, and flustered. I’m a hot mess mom and I know it. Our lives, our home, would often seem chaotic to those looking in. And sometimes even to me.
It is my chaos. A beautiful mess I wouldn’t trade for the world! I’m embracing the chaos and it is glorious. I can try to control it but that will only make me anxious and overwhelmed, or grumpy and mean — or all of that. That’s not what I want. This glorious chaos is what I choose. GLORIOUS. I reject the idea that chaos must be a bad thing when it is wrapped in children developing and growing surrounded by love, boundaries, and support.
Such glorious chaos!
Would I like things to be neat and orderly and quiet? Sure. You bet. They will be again someday. I don’t know when but definitely when I don’t have a two-year-old who is living life with the mission of emptying every container she can find. As I write this, colored pencils and books are scattered gloriously all over the floor, their containers gloriously empty.
There are days when I look around my home and wonder how in the world it looks worse than after a storm scene from ‘Twister’ when it seems like it had just been pretty clean. These things are relative. ‘Pretty clean’ is all I really hope for these days.
GLORIOUS.
There are days when I wonder why my children sound like a flock of flustered chickens, squawking and flapping all over the place with terrifying shrieks that hurt my ears and I remind (beg) them in vain to keep their voices to a 3-volume level indoors.
GLORIOUS.
There are days when I marvel with mild disgust at the mound of laundry and the box of mismatched socks that have been a permanent fixture in our home for YEARS.
GLORIOUS.
Then there’s the schedule, an online visual representation of the overlapping colorful chaos of who needs to be where when and when I look at it, I have no idea how we do it. Sometimes we don’t.
GLORIOUS.
Yes, some days I really miss having a quiet meal with easily flowing adult conversation. Some nights, when I’m up with a child fresh off a nightmare, I fantasize about how I really would love to sleep without interruption or a foot in my face.
Many days I wish clearing the table didn’t mean a Seussian stack of dishes perched precariously on the edge of the counter, waiting for someone to sneeze for it to go crashing to the floor. And any other number of times I have a moment of longing for less chaotic days.
This chaos that is my life brings me joy. Immense joy. Immense fatigue too and immense stress at times as well. I love it. Sometimes I hate aspects of it, like the jackets draped on the back of a chair right now. Oh, wait, that one is mine… And that’s okay. You don’t have to love every moment and every aspect to treasure your life and love your chaos.
But I accept it. Embrace it. Revel in it. This chaos is mine.
It is such GLORIOUS chaos.”
This story was submitted to Love What Matters by Jessica and Jeremy Martin-Weber of We’re All Human Here. Follow We’re All Human Here on Instagram here. Submit your story here, and be sure to subscribe to our best love stories here.
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