The trunk is full of clothes for the Salvation Army, and the recycling overflows. Mail piles, junk drawers, closets, toy bins: it’s all fair game. I’m the culling, sorting, take-no-prisoners arranger of disorder.
Well, today I am. Even Type Bs have their breaking point, somewhere between la vie boheme and utter chaos, and I found mine sometime after the furnace broke and the vomiting started.
Three day weekends aren’t the same once you have kids. I mean, it’s a long weekend all right, but not like it used to be when we’d stay out late, just us, and linger in bed all day next. These days, Jim works weekends, and I’m home with the monkeys, who are too sick for adventuring but not too sick to bicker and pick each other raw.
Try as I may, I can’t make them calm their hearts, but if my counters are clear, perhaps I’ll calm mine. Our house, which lately looks like it’s been hit by a tornado, is a metaphor for every furious squall I can’t control, so I’m starting with what I can. One shelf. One dresser. One pantry.
We lit a bonfire with the Christmas tree and toasted marshmallows in the flickering blaze. I’m tackling my temper next. Every blood-soaked strand is fuel for the fire.
Forget the former things;
do not dwell on the past.
See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness
and streams in the wasteland. (Isaiah 43:18-19)
A way through the wilderness. Streams amidst the wasteland. I’m trusting spring lies waiting beneath winter’s dormancy and toasting to cleared clutter, setting fires, and the new life which arises out of ash.
