Fight the Chaos or Learn to See the Beauty

As I worked through my newspaper stack this weekend (yes, I am one of the apparently dwindling number who still read the newspaper), I read about a local playwright with 3 young children, whose new work is opening at Arena Stage in Crystal City. In my never-ending quest to understand how other people manage to juggle seemingly conflicting things, I laughed when I read that she "used to fight the chaos a little bit more, but...with the third child...I just gave in to it." This change of heart led to five new plays.

In my own way, I have started down this path. I know my car still carries the odor of weed killer from Home Depot last weekend and my carpeting at times resembles the color of the fur of my black lab, but that is not the whole story. My daughter turned in her state poster on Monday at school, complete with state slogan, interesting fact, state flower, state bird, map and interesting places to visit. We found a fun new water slide for the summer, I filled out my application to work with INOVA cancer patients as a yoga teacher, and I donated some items in my garage to a local rummage sale. That doesn't mean there wasn't chaos: my husband did lock us out of the house just a half hour before we were to leave to take our scheduled karate promotion test, and I did temporarily feel overwhelmed when I thought my daughter's science project was due this Monday instead of next week.

But those were temporary speed bumps. They do not define my day, my week or whether I received a passing grade as mom or business owner or karate student. It does say that I have made choices - and those choices, more often than not, make me happy on my journey. But part of that peace arrived through deliberate thought processes. It is a skill I am still working to cultivate, but I know I have made progress when my daughter's playmate can ask her "Is this black fur on your toys?" and I can smile and think to myself "It is because it was a beautiful day and when I am old I will not remember the toys. I will remember the giggles when my daughter jumped on the trampoline or the shrieks when she slid into the mouth of the water shark on her slide." Sometimes what we need to change is not our activities, but our measuring stick.