فصل 11

CHAPTER 11

The Lie

OTHER PEOPLE’S KIDS ARE SO MUCH CLEANER/BETTER ORGANIZED/MORE POLITE

I’ve spoken at my fair share of MOPS groups over the years, and I personally believe there will be a special place in heaven for anyone who has lived through the season of raising a preschooler.

Like with most talks I’m asked to give, I get the question about what I’d like to speak on when it comes to parenting. Sometimes they even have a theme for me to work with, such as “Better Together” or “A Journey into . . .”

On these occasions I try and work into the theme based on what I know well.

A Journey into the Left Side of the Taco Bell Menu . . .

A Journey into Books with a Vampire and Werewolf Love Triangle . . .

A Journey into Finally Learning the Cha-Cha Slide to Impress Your Kids Just Before the Whip/Nae Nae Brought You Back to Square One . . .

Inevitably I sit down and do my best to work up some thoughtful, poignant discussion based on the proposed theme. A Journey into Understanding the Gospel, perhaps? Or A Journey into Finding Peace.

But when I try to sit down and write out my thoughts, I can’t organize them . . . Life gets in the way, kids get in the way, work, bedtime, dinnertime, naptime . . . It all gets in the way.

I find myself thinking, Lord! How do you expect me to speak about anything if I never get a moment’s peace?! I’m running around here like my hair is on fire, and you’re asking me to share wisdom with other women? You want me to talk about my faith?! I’m so tired I can’t even spell faith!

And I hear that still, small voice . . . That is what I want you to speak about.

This is probably the impetus for most if not all of the things I’ve ever done that resonated with other women and were therefore successful. I was struggling, and rather than try and sugarcoat it or pretend it wasn’t happening, I simply acknowledged my struggles in my work.

So I am not going to talk about finding your peace; I’m going to talk about embracing your chaos. Let’s be honest this is way more likely a scenario because I don’t know a woman alive today who can slow down long enough to find her keys, let alone a continuous state of inner peace. If you ever happened to find your peaceful inner bliss while raising children, please don’t tell the rest of us. It’ll only make us sad, and I eat raw cake batter when I’m sad.

I run a lifestyle media company that specializes in creating content for women. The tent pole of that company is the website, and every day a large fan base of ladies from all over the world checks in to figure out what to make for dinner or how to DIY a throw pillow or organize their kids for school or which outfits they should try for fall. I’m reminding you of that so you’ll remember that I literally offer women advice for a living. Every single bit of the work I do is created to help make women’s lives easier.

This is crucial because I’m about share an entire chapter on running toward chaos, on walking through hard things, on accepting the season you’re in—even when it sucks. A decade of doing this job has taught me something, and I have a pretty strong theory. Ironically, I think embracing chaos might be the path to finding peace.

Have you ever heard of the chaos theory? Chaos theory is the field of study in mathematics that identifies the behavior and condition of dynamical systems that are highly sensitive to initial conditions—a response popularly referred to as the butterfly effect. FYI, I Googled that. I’ve never in my life written out a sentence with the words dynamical systems before or since this moment.

The butterfly effect is a long-ago term based on the idea that if you tracked the path of a hurricane from its inception, you’d find that it was all caused by a change in air pressure from the flap of a butterfly’s wings three weeks prior and halfway across the world.

In simple terms, it just means that small things can have monstrous effects.

Chaos looks like my three-year-old waking up at least once a night and battling to sleep in our bed; my website crashing and needing hours of repair; my brother-in-law making a trip to the hospital; my husband traveling for ten days on business; me getting hives or Bell’s palsy or stress-induced vertigo; me spilling an entire gallon of milk; a bird pooping in my hair; a baby pooping in my hair; me fighting with my husband, my mom, my sister, or my husband’s mom’s sister . . . Y’all can fill in the blank with your own personal brand of chaos because we all have it.

Every single one of us is living in chaos, and we handle it in one of three ways

1. We ignore it. This is one of my favorite methods of chaos management. I pretend it isn’t there. I keep my head down and keep working harder and harder because nobody can hit a moving target.

The problem with ignoring your chaos is that chaos by nature is incredibly stressful. It’s like trying to pretend you’re not really sick when you clearly have the flu. You can try to mind-over-matter it, but ultimately, stress always catches up to you, and your body will react in negative ways. For me, my stress has reacted with Bell’s palsy or vertigo. My big sister gets hives when she’s stressed out. Another friend gets insomnia. You may think it’s not affecting you directly, but it will come out—and likely in ways that aren’t healthy for you or your family.

1. We battle it. Typically we battle chaos on a completely different field from the one we really need to address. So, in response to our relationships being stressful, we might clean the kitchen. We’ll clean the bedroom and the front room. We clean the kitchen again. We brush our kids’ hair and wipe their faces and cry when they get ketchup on their church clothes. We do everything in our power to have a picture-perfect existence, because maybe then the inside will match the outside.

The problem with a battle is that we will always lose. If we believe we can do enough or organize enough or plan enough to make sure that nothing is ever difficult, we will only make ourselves feel like a failure when life is too hard. Life is crazy and stressful, and sometimes it gets worse before it gets better. Losing a battle against regular, everyday life makes us feel impotent and angry. It makes us feel out of control.

1. We drown in it. We get overwhelmed by housework, regular work, family, and friends. The stressful things become all we see. It feels insurmountable—and no matter what we do, it doesn’t get better. We slip into wallowing. We complain, we crawl under the covers, and we let the chaos win.

The problem is, drowning means suffocating. And if we choose to stay underwater without kicking our way to the surface, we eventually forget how to swim.

Sister, you are stronger than this. You’ve got babies to raise and bills to pay and a life to live—and you can’t do that if you’re hiding under the covers!

Also, each of these ways—avoiding, battling, and drowning—is a prime platform for the false life preserver of substance abuse. You can use food to avoid facing your life. You can get drunk as a way to drown your sorrows. You can reach for so many negative substances to take your mind away from the chaos around you—and many of us do so without realizing that we’re developing a dangerous, regular coping mechanism instead of a one-time escape.

The biggest problem with all three of those things? Any one of them implies that you are the one in control. And to some extent that’s true . . . after all, the driving force behind this book is to remind you that you are in control of yourself. But you cannot control the actions of others, your kids having a meltdown, the baby having a blowout at Target, the dog digging up your yard, or the washing machine breaking down. And when you think you can, you’ll only find yourself angry, frustrated, and stressed. Also, when you assume you’re in total control, you don’t stop and take time to seek out a relationship with God; you use alternative means to try and manufacture some peace.

So what are our options? Ignore it, battle it, medicate the chaos until we feel numb to its effects? No way, we are stronger than that, even if it’s hard to feel it when you’re buried under a pile of laundry and a horde of hyper children.

There is another option—one people rarely cling to—embrace the madness. Interestingly enough, the people I know who do this best are the ones whose lives are the most chaotic of all. They’re my friends whose husbands are serving overseas. They’re the women I know who are raising special-needs children. They’re the single mamas working three jobs. I believe it’s because they learned a long time ago that there is beauty in the chaos, as well as freedom in not trying to fight against the tide.

The thing is, Jesus was the ultimate embracer of chaos. He preached and taught and shepherded a flock, and in the midst of his tumultuous ministry, he accepted everyone. Everyone was allowed to join in on the love. The widows, the prostitutes, the lepers, the orphans, people with great need, people who brought drama and stress into his life, and folks who weren’t always lovable or even kind. Furthermore, Jesus told us to love them too. He didn’t ask us kindly or say, “Hey guys, maybe you could . . .” No, he straight up called us to stand with the oppressed. Jesus looked at them and said, “Bring it on.” Jesus took in the messy, broken pieces and said, “Behold, I am making all things new” (Rev. 215 WEB). Amid our chaos, fear, and frustration there is the reminder, “For everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven” (Eccl. 31 WEB, emphasis added).

You’re sitting in your house, in your neighborhood, in your city, and thinking, This is so hard. Nobody else understands. I can’t keep up. Blah, blah, blah. And God is up there like, Good and perfect daughter, I have been talking about this since Jump Street!

Being overwhelmed isn’t a new concept.

Having a tough day or week? Do you snap at your husband or want to pull your hair out? You haven’t cornered the market on that. You are not the only one. The way you deal with your stress, though, is where your individuality comes through.

So maybe you’re reading this and you’re thinking, Okay, I’m in . . . I get it. Let’s embrace this chaotic life! But how in the heck do I do that?

Start by giving yourself some grace. We all mess up; we all make mistakes; we all forget pajama day or mix it up with picture day. I’ve screamed at my kids, my husband, and myself. None of it feels good, all of it devastates me, because the loss of control is so upsetting. But you know what? Tomorrow is another day and a chance to try again.

Take a breath. Find humor in the situation, and force yourself to look for it when it’s not immediately evident. A couple of years ago when we were getting certified to be foster parents, a social worker had to interview each of our kids. We sat in the living room with them while she asked innocuous questions over iced tea. She gave them harmless prompts . . . harmless until she spoke to a barely four-year-old Ford Hollis.

“What makes you happy?” she asked.

He said he liked to go swimming.

“And what makes you sad?” she followed up.

Without hesitation he told her, “When Daddy scares me in the night.”

Both Dave and I froze like deer in headlights. What? What the heck was he talking about? And why was he choosing right now, with a social worker from Child Protective Services, to work through this?

“What do you mean when Daddy scares you in the night?”

“You know, when he comes to my room in the night and he’s mad at me.”

Y’all, when you do an interview like this, you’re already on edge; but when your kids say something crazy, you think that not only are you not going to get approved for foster care but also you might lose the children you do have.

More questions revealed that Ford was talking about the night before when he’d woken up in the middle of the night and tried to sneak in bed with us (which is against the rules). Daddy was grouchy when he had to walk him back to bed three times at two o’clock in the morning. It’s hilarious in hindsight, but at the time, before we’d gotten clarification, I thought I was going to hyperventilate. So push yourself to laugh at hard situations. In fact, the crazier the situation, the more humor you should be able to mine from it.

I also encourage myself, and you, to look for the fruits of the Spirit. For those of you who didn’t grow up singing them on a kids’ worship music tape before breakfast each morning like I did, the fruits of the Spirit are love, joy, patience, peace, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. All of these are incredible values, but I believe there’s always one that we need the most in a particular season. Choose the one that resonates with you at this moment, write it down on some Post-its, and stick them everywhere.

Don’t forget to take a break, take care of yourself, go on a date, or get your nails done. Take some time just for you to refill your cup, and you’ll be better able to embrace all the madness when you step back inside of it.

Find a tribe of people who are in a similar walk of life as you are. Once you find them, be honest about where you are and what you’re struggling with. Learn to ask for help, and when someone offers help, accept it! Accept any and all help you can get and consider it a gift from God! I cannot tell you how many women ask me how I “do it all,” and when I tell them that I’ve learned to ask for help, they look at me as if I’m an alien.

“Like, help with what?”

For example, when your mother-in-law says she’ll come for the afternoon and entertain the kids, say, “Yes, please.” If your husband offers to fold the laundry (even when you don’t think he’s good at folding towels), say, “Yes, please.” If your girlfriend says she wants to bring you dinner or wine but you feel bad that you’re putting her out, say, “Yes, please.” Or if your elementary school offers afternoon classes that will occupy your rambunctious boys for an additional hour and a half, say, “Yes, please.”

What can give you more time, more space, more freedom to find your center? Whatever it is, say, “Yes, please” to that!

Remember that old joke about how a man keeps praying for God to save him from drowning? Someone comes by in a boat and asks him if he needs a ride, and he’s like, “Nah, God will save me.” When it happens two more times, he says the same thing both times. Spoiler alert The man ends up drowning, and when he gets to heaven, he’s like, “God, what the heck? I asked you to save me.” And God looks at him and says, “Dude, I sent you three different life rafts, and you ignored each one.”

Girlfriend, God is sending you all kinds of life rafts. Some are big and obvious, and some are as simple as the bagger at the store offering to load your groceries into your car. Get in the freaking boat!

Remember Philippians 16 “Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion.” Oh man, I just love that scripture. I believe it’s true, and I’ve watched it unfold in my life again and again. You will get through this season. This too shall pass. Don’t set the rest of your life up on a downhill slope because of one hard season.

It also might be helpful to remember that someone else is praying to have the kind of chaos you’re currently crying about. What I mean is, the things you think are so difficult could be someone else’s dream come true. I don’t say that to make you feel bad, or to negate your difficult experience; but perspective may help you see that your chaos is actually just a gigantic blessing. Adjusting your view can work wonders.

Lastly, remember the butterfly effect? Well, let’s consider an actual butterfly, or more specifically, a caterpillar. Caterpillars are awesome. They have all those legs and they’re really cool, and there’s an entire children’s book series about how pretty they are. But if the caterpillar just chose to stay a caterpillar, if she decided that the chaos of metamorphosis would be too much for her to handle, she would never know what she could become. Do you think that changing her entire being isn’t painful? Do you think it’s not scary and hard and overwhelming? Of course it is, but if she didn’t fight against the fear, if she didn’t allow the change to turn her into her true self, we would never know how beautiful she is. She would never know that she was meant to fly.

THINGS THAT HELPED ME . . .

1. Friends like me. Meaning, friends who were newly married when I was newly married. Friends who are entrepreneurs because I’m an entrepreneur. Friends who are working moms or boy moms or have kids at similar ages . . . they’re all lifesavers. Having someone you can grab a glass of wine with who can totally relate to your day is a gift. Such friends are vital in helping me feel encouraged.

2. Priorities. You can keep a clean house or start a company or stay at home with a baby or build a slammin’ bod from working out seven days a week . . . but I don’t think you can have all of those at the same time, or at least not in the same increments. Sit down and decide what’s really important to you. Not what’s important to your mother-in-law or your girlfriends . . . Decide what’s really important to you. Then do those things first. If the house is cluttered or you need to wait until next year to train for a half marathon, well, that’s just life.

3. Boxed wine. Okay, I’m kidding. Well, slightly kidding. I do think you should have something that helps you unwind. Running or watching HGTV or baking might be the thing for you. No matter what, find something in your life that feels like a treat or an indulgence. When you’re feeling extra frazzled, you should be able to go to your happy place and reset.