(Part of a series this week, my contributions to the Mother Letter Project, open letters from mothers to mothers.)
Dear Mother,
It’s 11 a.m. here.
Toddler’s crying. Her six-year-old brother kicked her. (Yes, he did confess, face contorted in guilt nod. Toddler too confessed: yes, she did cheat and look at his Stratego pawns. Not that she knows how to play Stratego. Apparently that’s beside the point.)
I rock Toddler. And recap Three Qs with kicking brother:
What did you do wrong?
Why was it wrong?
What are you going to do differently in the future?
And then, as always: Is that a commitment? Can I count on you?
He nods, shakes my hand, hugs sniffling toddler. I whisper a prayer for heart transplants.
Third-born son, 7, wanders aimlessly around house looking for that tattered math book of his. I look at the clock. He’s been wandering for an hour. (That’s including the time he spent building a supersonic blaster out of Legos. But he’s right: he did discover that the math book wasn’t at the bottom of the Lego box.)
Before I offer Levi another place to look, Daughter screams that Oldest Son stepped in her room, oldest son smirks, daughter whaps him in shoulder, Oldest Son falls to floor in Oscar winning performance, I ask daughter and son to recite memorized Phil 2:1-4, Second Son hollers that Oldest Son is late for online class but computer’s jammed, and Farmer Husband steps in back door asking if we can have lunch in half an hour; he’s hoping to give another go at harvesting last of the corn. And pencil crayons, paper snippets, blizzard across the floor and the farm table’s buried deep under notebooks, remnants of crumbled Lego masterpieces, book bags, phonics tiles.
I want to scream. I do.
Oldest son throws hands up over head, as if apprehended. Daughter’s eyes shrink back. And I can hear my mama’s voice echoing down memories halls: It’s not that you aren’t going to blow it. It’s what you do with it afterwards.
I have. Blown it. Erupted.
And what now afterwards?
It’s 11 a.m. and one would wonder what I’ve accomplished. A glance around here and it wouldn’t look like much. Except maybe I’ve torn out a few bricks from the foundation of my own house. Frustration wields a wrecking ball.
Some days it’s hard not to wave a white flag in surrender.
Clean. And the papers and books and Legos multiply. Cook. And scrub and repeat and repeat and repeat. Wash the clothes. Fold the clothes. Stack the clothes. And watch them migrate back to the laundry basket. A mother’s work is but sand etches; the next wave washes it all away.
But don’t grains of sand carve stone?
It’s 11 a.m. and I do afterwards what I should have done more fervently before. I bend knees at the prayer bench, intentionally creating solitude in the multitude, and remember again the story of Abba Paul, that desert monk who wove baskets and prayers.
While other monks lived close enough to cities to sell their handiwork in the markets, Abba Paul lived such a distance that the cost of transportation would exceed any profits from selling the baskets. Nonetheless, each day he collected palm fronds and worked as faithfully as if basket making were his primary means of support. And come the end of the year, when his cave overflowed with long months of toil, he took torch to the work of his hands and the flames devoured and rose higher and cackled long into the night. And then, come morning, the heat died away, satiated. And Abba Paul stood in the long quiet and the wind blew away the ashes of all his work.
It’s 11 a.m. and I’m Abba Paul, the wind blowing through and a heap of papery ashes to show for hard toil. The pounding surf of raising children, the fiery furnace of mothering, leaves me with little to physically hold at the end of the day. But are the most significant things in our lives things we can tangibly touch? Visibly see?
Won’t the majority of our work, the laundry, the housecleaning, the meal-making, while necessary acts of service, just too burn up?
“But on the judgment day, fire will reveal what kind of work each builder has done. The fire will show if a person’s work has any value. If the work survives, that builder will receive a reward. But if the work is burned up, the builder will suffer great loss. The builder will be saved, but like someone barely escaping through a wall of flames” (1 Cor. 3:13-15).
So a mother kneels. So a mother gets up and works and prays, prays and works. Because the prayers we weave into the matching of socks, the stirring of oatmeal, the reading of stories, they survive fire.
Aren’t the prayers of our days more important than the products of our days?
And the prayers are the genesis of all that can withstand the flames: love, patience, faith, joy, hope. Our prayers make our work acts of praise; our prayers make our work acts of passion for these people living here. These people we love more than life.
Dear Mother, I’m learning it’s always time to pray. Because the house where He lives is a house of prayer and it’s the only way I can keep mine standing.
It’s 11 a.m. and I pray.
Part two of series tomorrow, Lord willing
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