of it like this: You are trying to get out the door to take your children to the park. You have an hour to get there and back, which is great if you are ready to go right this minute. But when it’s time to leave, you can’t find the toddler’s shoe. And then, after twelve minutes spent scouring the house, you realize you also don’t have your car keys. By the time you have rounded up all the things you need to get out the door and have an adventure, half your time is gone.
We can all relate to that concept of order; this is order at its most practical (and where the idea of clearly labeled bins and containers makes sense). But expand this concept to a larger scale. Our “keys” and “shoes” are things that take away our time. Maybe it’s spending too much time on the internet; maybe it’s investing too many hours outside of your primary vocation. It might be spending too much time feeling tired or angry or sad.
If we haven’t taken care of the basics, day-to-day living is crazy. When we’re busy with all the small things, what we need to be doing (the good stuff) gets less of our attention.
So when we talk about order, we mean having all the events in our life taking up the proper amount of our time and energy. Searching for our keys isn’t what life is all about, but for too many of us, the scramble of the nitty gritty leaves us feeling worn out before we even start the things we actually want and need to be doing.
Order in life means understanding, appreciating, and recognizing the season of life I’m in, and then proceeding accordingly.
For example, a mother with small children should not put pressure on herself to have a prayer life that looks like a nun living in a cloister. God has given her the vocation of motherhood, and she is in a unique season of having small children. Those two things (motherhood, small children) take priority over what she might consider an “ideal” prayer life. The ideal is actually doing what God has asked of her right now (being a mom to small children!) and letting everything else in her life work around that.
That is true order and simplicity: recognizing my vocation, and where I am in regards to that, and allowing every other detail to fall into place around it.
From this comes peace.
Peace isn’t only about feeling good about the stuff I’m doing, or following my passions (though your passions are important). Peace comes from acknowledging that Jesus has a specific purpose for my life and that he will give me the grace, wisdom, and time to get it all done. Peace comes from always asking God to be in the center of what I’m doing, and asking God if what I’m doing is what he wants me to do.
The thing about order is that it happens on a very large scale. Maybe it’s even on a variety of scales. First off, we must have the big picture in order — am I doing what I need to be doing? Is my time and energy being used in ways that serve me and my family? Are we making the money we need? Are the practical and emotional needs of each family member being met? The beautiful part of family life is that each individual family must find the answers to those questions, to be honest within the family unit, and then do what works best. We consider all the factors and find the work/life balance that we need.
From there, we work for order in our home, order in a practical sense.
And we work for order within our person, order in our body, mind, and spirit.
And finally, we need order in our relationship with God, which impacts the way we see ourselves and the way we interact with the world around us.
That is a lot of order to maintain! If we think too much about it, we can get overwhelmed.
The best way to maintain a sense of order is not to think too much about the bigger picture on a minute-by-minute basis, but to focus on simplifying the small aspects of our lives that come together to bring us peace. Even our order needs to be in the right order! When we find the right balance, slowly we move in the direction of a peaceful existence. Instead of moving through our days, putting out fires or simply surviving, we are able to thrive.
“Most people don’t do their maintenance and end up controlled by emergencies,” says Christian author and speaker Joyce Meyer. Isn’t that the truth! When we are running so ragged that we don’t have time to get ahead of anything, our day is dictated by the next urgent deadline. Meyer relayed a story of only going to the dentist when she had a major toothache. By avoiding regular cleanings (because she was afraid of going), she was always dealing with urgent situations. Because she didn’t take care of matters proactively, she was controlled by the worst-case scenario.
Here is the benefit of true order and peace: when we are paying attention to the little things, with the right amount of energy and focus, we can eliminate that rat-race feeling. Yes, emergencies will arise. But those will be the exception rather than the rule.
Order and simplicity aren’t the equivalent of perfection. In fact, a great deal of peace comes from letting go of a desire to be perfect. We don’t show the world we are Christians by our perfection — but we have a peace that cannot be bought or faked.
Order brings peace. Order doesn’t bring a life free of mistakes or a guarantee that we won’t ever suffer or feel tired or overwhelmed. But order can help us cut out the fat, help us operate within boundaries and margins that protect us from losing our way.
Lives can have order in so many ways. We can have order in our home, in our thinking, in the way we relate to other people. We need order in our prayer life, and order in our approach to our attitudes about time, money, and talent. There are so many details that make up a day, and when we spend enough time tweaking them (not too much, not too little) we begin to find the simplicity we need to fill our days with peace. Simplicity and peace come from a life of order, which means each task gets the energy and attention it needs.
comparison is the thief of peace
Order and peace and organization and limits — all these things will look different for different people. That was part of my challenge in my journey toward redirecting and reviving my focus. I looked at the women around me, who seemed to be doing the exact same thing as me and then some. I was especially aware of the women who worked at the school fulltime alongside me, who also had children still at home and seemed to manage it all beautifully. They spent more hours at the school than I did and didn’t seem the least bit frazzled.
Unfortunately, I allowed that comparison to make me blind to my own struggle. If they can do it, I reasoned, I should be able to!
In his book on restoring sanity to overloaded lives, Dr. Richard Swenson is quick to point out that physical and mental stress looks different for different people.
“Individuals differ significantly regarding how much stress is desirable or what types of events are distressing,” he writes in Margin. “What strains some does not bother others.… A stressor that for one might be pleasure, for another might be pain. For one, the price of life; for another, the kiss of death.”
People have different levels of stress that they can tolerate, as well as different events that cause stress in different ways. So one event that I might find totally relaxing, you might find completely stressful. And vice versa.
“We must understand,” Dr. Swenson writes, “that everyone has a different tolerance for overload and a different threshold level when breakdown begins to occur. It is important for us to set people free to seek their own level.”
In other words, don’t compare!
True peace and order, a simplified life, has at its core a true understanding of what God is asking of you. This is why it’s so important to always be working toward closer union with God — we have to have a real relationship with him to understand what it is he wants of us. It’s not enough to look at the people around you, people with similar gifts or at a similar place in life. In fact, this could lead to envy and absolute burnout! While it’s nice to be inspired by those around us, we do have to keep our eyes on our own paper.
Here is where a holistic approach to simplicity and peace comes in. We pay attention to our spiritual, mental, and physical needs, and we make lots of small efforts to care for the many areas of our life. We make decisions