Why all the Chaos?
A couple of days ago I was trying to get the kids to go to bed. It was one of those days I was looking forward to bedtime like an oasis in a parched dry desert. I felt like we had tried to cram too much into one day, too much school, too many errands, just too much stuff and they were behaving terribly to boot. After finally settling my daughter down and turning off her light she realizes that she doesn’t have her stuffed puppy, Fuzzburr (yes, not Fuzzberg, Fuzzburr, because real names make too much sense around here, my oldest has a bat named Gritiif and my middle boy has a puppy named Brown Shark).
I began to spend several minutes searching for this dog that she suddenly couldn’t live without. I mean, he’d been an integral part of her life for all of 4 days. I started to feel like some rescuer searching for survivors buried under the rubble after an earthquake that is just how messy my child’s rooms are. Let’s be honest, my whole house often looks that way. So cluttered. So chaotic. I just found the dog in the living room laying on a set of sheets from the boys’ bedroom and munching on a whole Gala apple. This did not in the least bit surprise or alarm me even though I have no idea how any of that happened or why. I didn’t even know we had apples.
I’ve always been told that messy houses are just a part of life when you have kids and you spend so much time cleaning up the same messes over and over again for little people that are trying to master how to communicate their thoughts and feelings, let alone be trained to NOT live like wild animals. This makes sense to me. What doesn’t make sense is the extra chaos, the extra business, the added stress. My house is full of a thousand things we don’t need. I’m working as fast as I can to keep said things off the floor and put away and not eaten by the dog or dismantled by a curious 6 year old or trampled by a size-13 shoe wearing husband.
The real question here is why do we have so much clutter? So much stuff? I’ve been on a bit of a quest over the past couple of years to really simplify our lives. I have this deep, unsettled yearning for a home in the country where we can grow most of what we consume and have room to breathe and play and raise our family.
So far, it’s a dream not yet realized but we are taking baby steps. The first of which is paying off all of our debt. We have debt not only because we have so much stuff but because we spent years of our marriage making stupid financial decision after stupid financial decisions. I say “we”. I don’t mean to throw my husband under the bus; I’ve been mostly in charge of our financial blunders.
About a year and a half ago, both so discouraged and so stressed and overwhelmed we realized the majority of our stress came from this immense financial burden that was absolutely pointless. This is when we attended Financial Peace University and finally found some direction.
We bought a house without much of a plan about 10 years ago, only really restricted by what we were pre-approved for by the lender, which was a completely unrealistic number now that I know what I know. We weren’t thinking that at some point, I would want to stay home with the kids and homeschooling was something we didn’t even think about. Nevertheless, we purchased a home with zero down on a mortgage based on our two relatively healthy incomes and proceeded to live far beyond our means.
We filled the house with stuff. Stuff that we thought we needed, stuff that looked fun, stuff that we thought the kids would like. Long story short, I sit here typing with a good deal more wisdom than I had 10 years ago and I know why. I know why we are burdened with chaos. Now we know what we want and we have to spend some time paying the “stupid tax” as Dave Ramsey calls it not only financially but in changing our habits, altering our behavior and attitudes and we pay that tax with our time, like a penance. Now we have to wait for what we know we really do want and what we believe God has called for our lives.
It is a slow repair. Trash bag by trash bag we get rid of the things that we don’t really need or care about. Chunk by chunk the debt is getting paid off. Slowly, our family is changing and we are beginning to dream and to hope that those things we really want and yearn for we might actually achieve.
I guess the point of sharing this is that there’s hope. We find so often that we are competing and living this typical suburban life. We have houses that all line up straight on our suburban street, all decorated with similar landscaping and anything different stands out. We all have the same factory made items that everyone else has. We all go to the same fast food restaurants and shop the same sales at Target.
As for me, I have been searching for something different. For us, that "something different" is how and where we live. That’s not the case for everyone. It could be where you work or how you share the Gospel. I don’t know. But all of that, all that makes you unique and special, can get drowned out in the chaos. The self-inflicted chaos. God made us all individuals with our own gifts and hopes. I don’t have to live just like everyone else and dissolve into the faceless crowd. Neither do my kids.
I have friends who tell me how busy they are and how stressful their life is. I wish I could just ask them, without being insulting, why? Is that stuff that you’ve crammed into your life REALLY important? The job that you work simply to pay on your mounds of continual and never ending debt? The ten things you signed your kids up for that don’t really mean anything and they don’t even like? I know that I waste a ton of valuable time simply on my iPhone. Why?
As for the financial aspect, there is a solution and I recommend FPU to EVERYONE. DO IT. As for the rest get into your Bible and pray. Ok, ok, now I’m being bossy.
I suppose I could go on forever here. I’ll sum up with a desire that you have purpose and that you know God made you for a purpose and how you spend your time and live your life can either hinder that or make it flourish.
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