photo credit: kirtaph

Have you experienced “chaos on the cusp of order” in your life?  How do you figure out when to take a breather and how to return with new energy?

Sunday, already in a BAD mood but boxed-in by time constraints, I tackled my piled-high desk, trying to create an orderly working-space for doing my most hated cluster of tasks – ones my husband (a cost accountant by education and profession) used to do before cancer stole him from us – THE BILLS.  And suddenly, wham! I’m on the verge of despair and tears, helplessly bemoaning: “I’ll NEVER get this done, this is hopeless. I just can’t do this!”

Uh Oh, She’s Succumbed to Hopelessness

Well, I walked out on it all.  Into the next room I marched and there, spying the time, realized that to get to the noon instead of the evening church service (so I could enjoy a neighborhood concert in the evening) I’d best shower, dress and get going.

Well, despite my fervent prayers to the contrary, leprechauns failed to produce order out of chaos while I was gone.

Why am I telling you all this agony?  Because, in my experience “chaos on the cusp of order” is a very real and miraculous moment – I just need to have a wee bit of faith!

A Miraculous Moment — Say What?

Over the years, I’ve learned there is this turning point, an awesome tick-in-time when I, ready to throw in the towel, choose to keep going a tick-tock longer, and miraculously, everything just falls into place.  PattiAnn calls such a moment “automagical.”  It’s like watching someone (who knows how to) solve a Rubik’s Cube.  Following a flurry of moves, if the puzzler doesn’t give up, the elegant solution appears. So too can chaos transform to order.  IF I just don’t give up too soon.

So I Chose to Try Again

Yeah, the order came – it just took my giving it one more go, a few more tick-tocks of standing up to and getting past the discouraging hopelessness. Me, MAKING it happen.

What Have I Learned (Again)?

That giving myself breathing room helps…  and that I don’t need a reason (like getting ready and going to church) to take a break. That taking a time-out doesn’t mean I’m a quitter, it means that I’m revving my power with a change of scene and energy.  And that “chaos on the cusp of order” is a true phenomenon in my life.  I just have to NOT give up.

Have you experienced “chaos on the cusp of order” in your life?  How do you figure out when to take a breather and how to return with new energy?