Something that has been on my mind a lot lately is the idea of “embracing the chaos of life” so I thought I’d spend some time talking about this. It’s actually become a bit of a motto for me lately.
You see, all throughout college and grad school I kept telling myself “I just need to make it through_____ and then things will slow down.” The problem with that is that I consistently worked (more than) full time, went to school full time, and I was in a relationship with my now husband for almost all of that. Those are three big commitments. They all required a lot from me and I frequently felt stressed and like I was just hanging on to that hope of “things might slow down.” But they didn’t.
Fast forward and I’m now a mom of two little boys, I work full time, and I’m a wife. While my commitments and responsibilities have changed the chaos has not. The laundry has doubled, the dishes and meal prep has increased, I now have an actual career and it often requires me to do prep outside of the office, we have a house to maintain, etc. And that’s just the predictable stuff.
I’m not complaining here, really, I’m not. I’m just describing the reality of what it looks like to be an adult and I know that all of you can feel me on this. This is life. We have responsibilities and commitments and things don’t actually slow down. Maybe they shift a little bit but they don’t slow down. If anything, I actually feel like time has sped up.So I realized this.
Having the perspective that I just need to get through something and then things will be better has only robbed me of my joy in the moment.
It’s also given me an excuse to be stressed and disconnect from my husband and my family. And then, when I realize that I’ve completed X, Y, and Z and things still haven’t slowed down I just feel frustrated, overwhelmed, and helpless. It’s not a good feeling.
So I’ve made it a point to embrace the chaos. In some ways this has meant that I let the dirty dishes sit on the counter for the night and play with my boys instead. At other times I’ve allowed myself to take a few moments to acknowledge my looong to-do list and accept that it’s not all going to be completed today and that’s okay. But the biggest thing I’ve learned about embracing the chaos is to just be in the moment and stop focusing on the “if only’s” or the “if I could just get through this…”
More recently I have found myself practicing this when it comes to date nights. While I would love to go out and have a night out with my hubby it’s just not something we can manage right now between having a newborn, finances while I’m on maternity leave, etc. Basically, there’s a lot of planning involved and it’s just not something that we can realistically manage at the moment because we’re still adjusting.
I’ll be honest, there’s that part of me that goes, “We just have to get through this newborn stage and then we can do….” While that might be true because each stage brings new things I’ve found that focusing on that pulls me right out this stage. So instead of feeling bitter that we can’t manage to get out of the house (with our long list of reasons why) I can embrace the chaos by just appreciating this stage that we’re in. Our little guy is only going to be this little for so long and everything else is not permanent either.
So date night might look a little differently right now, like eating some ice cream and watching a movie after the kids have gone to bed. Or sneaking in some time together on Saturday afternoon when the stars align and both kids nap simultaneously!! Or maybe even letting the littlest tag along because he’s refusing to go to bed so we all sit on the patio and enjoy the cool evenings before they disappear because we live in Phoenix. For me, embracing the chaos when it comes to dates means that we just have to be creative and snag the little slots of time that we can find and enjoy them rather than wishing they looked different.
Shifting my perspective makes me feel so appreciative of this stage and makes the chaos feel like it’s just a sign that I’m living my life instead of it being something I need to fix or end.
It takes work and practice to be mindful of the moment in front of me and find ways to enjoy the moment, but I have to say that I feel less stressed and frustrated. This doesn’t mean that the chaos isn’t hard (it’s still very hard at times), it just means that I’m not fighting it so hard to be different and I can be happy and enjoy what’s going on despite the fact that life can be chaotic. Because the truth is there will be a time that we’ll all look back on these days and wish we would’ve enjoyed things a little bit more. Every stage of life is going to bring it’s stress and it’s chaos but embracing it means we aren’t trying to escape it.
So with that, I’d encourage you to talk with your spouse about this. What stage of life are you in and what’s the current “chaos?” Talk about ways that you can embrace the chaos together. The beauty of this is that this allows you both to connect and be attuned with each other through whatever stage you’re currently in. Who knows, maybe you’ll even learn something new about each other or how you can support each other through your current chaos. Let me know how this goes in the comments below!
Love this probably because I’ve been thinking very similar thoughts! I always seem to either be reminiscing about how good/easy it was in “the good old says” or striving after an idealistic future (“once she’s 6 months old/no longer nursing/sleeping through the night”). I know from experience that the future will come and then this current present that I’m so anxious about will become my new nostalgic daydream but it’s still very hard for me to just enjoy the present, no matter how messy it is.
Yes! It can be such a challenge to stay present. I often think about the Element days and all those late nights that we all hung out. Those were good days and in so many ways I look back and feel like they were the “easy days.” But truthfully, those were hard days too, just in different ways. Over the last few years I’ve learned to start practicing mindfulness (which I can’t wait to write about so stay tuned) and it really has made such a difference. It’s helped me learn how to be engaged in my current experience, whatever that may be, instead of drifting off into the past or future. I’m definitely not a mindfulness pro but I’ve definitely seen improvement in my life and decreased anxiety because of it.