A week ago while I  answered emails, baby Emerald jabbered happily behind me on the floor, playing with an old Mickey Mouse pop-up toy. All of a sudden there was a noisy crash much like breaking glass, followed by Emerald’s loud wail.

I spun around just in time to see hundreds of marbles scatter all over her and the floor, their glass container lying next to her. Marbles were skittering wall-to-wall and into two adjacent rooms, bouncing off baseboards and heating vents.

Grabbing Emerald to soothe her panic, I figured her reach had grown longer than I’d estimated, and she’d pulled the heavy jar off the shelf where it had been doubling as a bookend.

After putting her safely in her walker, I crawled around on hands and knees, scooping marbles back into the jar, finding some of them 20 feet away. I wanted to get every single one, since 9 month old babies who put everything into their mouths aren’t compatible with marbles.

Even after my diligent search that day, though, I’m still finding strays in distant corners, under bookshelves, behind table legs, and under upholstered chairs. Today I stepped on one (barefooted) in a closet.

An explosion of chaos, whether it’s marbles or just a chaotic life event, usually includes a major clean-up effort. And often the ones mopping up aren’t the ones who made the mess. For example, Emerald wasn’t capable of picking up the marbles (of course), so I needed to do it. That minor mishap, though, was nothing compared to some of the turmoil life brings, along with the complicated aftermath.

But sometimes those of us who think we’re innocent in a messy situation, really aren’t. Did we neglect the preventive measures we should have put in place to make a disaster less likely? Could we have been more sensitive to a need behind a deed, helping someone ahead of time?

It takes two to tango and usually takes more than one to cause a catastrophe. If we uncap our halo polish insisting we’re without fault, we probably aren’t. In the case of our flying marbles, I should have been watching Emerald more closely. Turning a back on a busy baby is never smart.

It’s possible God lets chaos happen in order to get our full attention on a certain problem we haven’t been aware of. It might be his effective way to avoid something worse down the road. In other words, minor chaos now in exchange for absolute bedlam later.

Does that mean we ought to thank God when everything’s falling apart? The problematic but accurate answer is yes.

Today I’m thankful for flying marbles. It let me know Emerald can reach higher, pull harder, and hurt herself more seriously than I thought she could. And now I know. Our marbles have been relocated to the very top shelf.

“O God…. renew a right spirit within me.” (Psalm 51:10)