I swept up every leaf this fall, after they’d taken their own sweet time falling.

No really. I did.

Seriously.

Come the end of November, if you’d have visited, you’d have said “Well, wow!” or something along the likes of that.

You’d have noticed that the line of bushes that are sitting in what can only be described as the very worst place to plant a line of bushes (under a veritable panoply of oaks) was nicely mulched with leaves, courtesy of those self-same oaks.

And you would have pronounced my fall-yard-cleanup-work done. And I would have invited you in for tea or coffee, and we would have chatted up a storm just knowing that all was right with the world. Or at least with my yard.

Then the winds came.

Not the snow, mind you, for which I suppose I am grateful. (Though that is scheduled to arrive in a day or so.)

But the winds.

Which did, in fact, come.

And which blew everything, as they say, into chaos.

Much like life’s winds.

My yard, once so pristine and well kept and ordered and clean, is now not so much. There are leaves strewn hither and yon, and yep – right up to my front walk, which I’ve painstakingly been clearing of weeds and debris for the better part of a year.

The irony is not lost on me.

You work and you work and you think that you control things and then…

…winds come. Chaos comes. Debris comes.

In life and in love and in…well…just in generally.

And it – this thing I like to call chaos – never ever comes – or maybe almost never (I hate to make absolutist statements) – when we expect it.

But still it comes.

Maybe it’s God’s way of keeping us on our toes. Or maybe it’s Her way of reminding us that we’re not Her.

Or maybe it’s His way of reminding us that we’re not, ahem, in control after all.

Can I whisper a secret?

I sort of like this.

I actually sort of like that I’m not in control. I mean, knowing me, I think that I’d actually be a terrible choice for that job. I think God is a much better fit.

Way more experience, y’know?

Still, it bothers me that my leaves are all scattered about. And after all that work of putting them in order.

But…and this is just me thinking out loud here…

What if the scattering has some purpose?

What if the One who is in control actually knows what She’s doing?

And what if it’s actually okay that these leaves get all snowed on and stay there ‘till the spring?

What if chaos is actually part of the plan?

~xo,
LuAnne

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“All shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well.” (~Julian of Norwich)