Name: Dominique, of the Countryside
Job Title: Wife-Mother-Teacher-Supervisor
Job Description: To bring chaos to order.
That's what I feel like. I fight the chaos battle every day. The closet that descends into chaos, despite its orderly beginnings. The dresser drawers that were once neat, now just piled. Toy bins once housing homogenous articles, now becoming a mish-mosh of assorted items. Tupperware cupboards once carefully sorted, now jumbled and falling out. Chore routines, usually an organized morning march, now slip-sliding to a hickly-pickly AM scramble. Behavior, once carefully thought out, now carelessly reflecting the anything goes attitude. It's this cycle of cleaning up life's messes, maintaining the order for a while and cleaning up the messes again. Somehow that cycle struck me as so discouraging tonight.
The beginnings of the chaotic cycle are back in the Garden of Eden with the Fall of Man. Nothing stays orderly and perfect anymore. (Personally this is one of my most favorite proofs of the error in evolution's theories.) Everything descends into chaos. Everything. Somehow I have to live with a level of acceptance that my role in this world will be to help bring that chaos to order - over and over again. I think though that when I come to that acceptance, there's power in it. Somewhere in there, in trying to bring chaos to order, whether in behavior, chores or cupboards, there's something valuable in doing it to the best of my ability, for God. I can allow myself a constant discouragement by more chaos, more disorder, more messes. Or, I can accept that Man sinned. We live with the effects of it in this fallen world. But as I clean up every mess, as I strive to go back to a place of order in all of these areas, I look forward. I hope. I long for that Day. That Day and that Place, where the effects of sin are completely absent for all time. It's a Place where God's order reigns, where His plans are never interfered with again. It's a Place with no pain, no discouragement, no chaos, no evil.
Perhaps my job description is to bring chaos to order. In the midst of that, I'll look up and long for that Day.
