Why it might be a blessing to do dishes by hand

The air is downright chilly in the mornings and evening soccer practices yield to cool darkness. Autumn is upon us. I’m a big fan of weather, an embracer of the change of seasons. And of all the seasons, I love autumn best. This year, though, I find myself wishing it wouldn’t arrive so quickly. Time just seems to slip through my fingers these days. Autumn comes and with it, the close of the year will soon be upon us. Hurry, hurry. We race on. I’m not ready to let this year go.

Where can we find more time? Amidst the bustle of it all — the super-fast debit card self-checkout that eliminates the need to count out change and chat with the cashier about what I plan to bake with those chocolate chips and the can of pumpkin; the E-Z Pass that eliminates a smile and a “Have a nice day” with the man in the tollbooth; the automated checkout at the library that means we won’t chat stories with the children’s librarian — we are hustling through time. It feels so frantic. We feel so frantic.

Tell me, what do we gain in our hurry? I can well see what we lose. We lose our sense of community. We lose our connectedness to one another. We lose the ability to stop and savor and settle in and notice the details. And in our hurry, we find ourselves feeling cheated, as if we just pushed our way through but didn’t really live the life we’ve been given.

Last week, our dryer was broken. In a family of 11, when the dryer breaks, we all get pretty creative about places to hang clothes. Our homeowner’s association prohibits clotheslines, preferring the aesthetic of efficient dryers trapped inside stuffy laundry rooms to the messy beauty of linens blowing wild in the breeze. Go figure.

We hung clothes from portable soccer goals and relished the warm windiness of the day. For the few days of our inconvenience, I was not-so-secretly enjoying being “forced” to stand in the sunshine and shake out clean laundry. It was terribly inefficient, made the chore much more time-consuming, and would likely become wearisome over time. But in the moment, it was a golden opportunity to relish the moment, to linger long instead of tossing clothes inside the drum while looking ahead to the next thing to do.

The day we got the dryer fixed, the dishwasher decided it was no longer communicating with the water source. Admittedly I grumbled a bit before I resigned myself to filling my sink with warm, soapy bubbles. Surveying my “help,” I decided it was probably easier to wash dishes by myself than to coach my reluctant dishwashers through this new way of tackling the typical Tuesday night table set for eight. Or 10.

Here’s what you can’t do while washing dishes by hand: You can’t get distracted by your smartphone. You can’t wander out of the room when a child keeps adding to a longwinded, very detailed, not-even-remotely true story. You can’t quickly go check the laundry. Or your email. You have to stand there, hands in the warm suds, and be fully present in the moment. It doesn’t much feel like time is slipping through your fingers.

Where’s the slow in life? Can we seek it, find it, perhaps even create it? Can we deliberately pull into the slow lane sometimes? Can we embrace the wait time? Take a few extra moments to pay in cash and count out exact change, looking the cashier in the eye and sharing a warm word or two? Can we breathe more deeply, park a little further away and enjoy the walk? Can we plunge into the sink full of bubbles and invite someone we love to pull up a stool and chat while we rinse away the hurry with the dirt?

When we do, we catch moments that glisten like soapsuds in the early evening light across the sink. And time swishes warmth around us instead of swirling forcefully down the drain.

The Mission of Motherhood & the Gray Areas

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We all noticed it the year Patrick was fourteen. It seemed like overnight, but really, it wasn't. It was the whole fourteenth year. And my husband turned gray.

It wasn't all Patrick, of course. That was the year of the fragile pregnancy and the fragile baby, and the college athlete who spent too much time on the bench. And then there was Patrick.

Gray hair.

This has been my year to turn gray. My friend the stylist is out on maternity leave. My hair was long overdue for a cut, making me crazy, curls more out of control as they lose color. I couldn't wait for her to return (and I have a hunch she won't), so I went to see the lady who cut my hair last year. To remind her of how it is supposed to be cut, I showed her a picture from the wedding.

"Oh my goodness! It's turned so gray!"

Is this how they get people to beg for color to go with their cut? No, thanks. I work too hard to keep color and chemicals out of my food to pay someone to allow it to seep into my scalp. If it's going to be gray, it's going to be gray. And apparently, it's going to be gray.

It's not Patrick, this time. Well, there is that dang bench in college again, but no one thinks that will last long. He's discouraged, but he's just building character.

There are other things this time around, things that pull on a mama's heart. And things that make her hair turn gray. She wonders, remembers, that it's not all turning out the way we thought it would.

Way back when we thought life was black and white and there were no shades of gray...

Now? Now there's gray. There is the benefit of experience. It stands in the gap where once stood the confidence (and naivete?) of youth. 

And my problems? They are decidedly first world problems. In the morning, as I pull gray hairs from between my fingers and ask if perhaps today could be calm for my children, my neighbors, and my friends, my husband reminds me that life is hard. Really hard. Gently, he pointed to the idea that when it's hard, there are children and young adults who look to our home for refuge. They call this home. And I didn't give birth to all of them.

Life is hard and we are called to be Christ to one another in the midst of the hard. 

Later in the day, a friend reminds me that children are starving, wars are waging, young fathers are dying of AIDS. All a world away in a place that is not at all first world. That's hard life, she says. I am chagrined. And silenced.

The question burns though, all day, as I answer text messages and call in resources and troubleshoot and cry and pray and wait and worry on the behalf of people in my here and now: Is it somehow less when we suffer in the first world? Do those who suffer the pains of affluence--who know exactly how far their disease has progressed because they can afford a CT scan after they've drunk horrid yellow radioactive dye; those who struggle away from home for the first time because they've been afforded an education and tuition to university; those who wonder about paying the bills of a middle class lifestyle because suddenly costs will rise and income will decrease--is their suffering less worthy of my time and attention than the suffering across the ocean? 

St. Therese wanted to be a missionary to foreign lands. Instead, God called her to the cloister. Still, the Church calls Therese of Lisieux the patron of missions. Why? She shares the patronage with the great Jesuit missionary, St. Francis Xavier. His spiritual principle was, to “love those people to whom we are sent and to make ourselves loved by them.”

St.Therese never left the cloister, never. Her motto? “To love Jesus and to make him loved.” She lived this mission wholeheartedly: “Just as a torrent, throwing itself with impetuosity into the ocean, drags after it everything it encounters in its passage, in the same way, Jesus, the soul who plunges into the shoreless ocean of your love draws with her all the treasures she possesses. Lord, You know it, I have no other treasures than the souls it has pleased You to unite to mine; it is You who entrusted these treasures to me.”

To other people He has entrusted populations of impoverished natives of foreign lands. 

Me? He has sent me to a small town in the shadow of Washington, DC. He knows this small circle in suburbia is all that I can manage. I'm sure He's wondering at how poorly I "manage" even that some days. Then again, He has numbered every gray hair on my head. Nothing surprises Him.

Mothers are mostly little and hidden. St. Therese had great apostolic zeal, yet it wasn't until after her death that the example of her life, the simplicity of her spirituality, and the intercession of her spirit, made her an apostle to the nations.

St. Therese is a good patron for mothers at home, particularly mothers at home who might occasionally be distracted by the proliferation of blog posts and books that urge them to move beyond their "comfortable selfishness" to evangelize and bring comfort to the remote corners of the world. 

Go! By all means, whatever it takes, if it is God's call, go.

It's not always God's call. Sometimes He calls us to quiet witness in our homes and communities. Sometimes He calls us to remain little and hidden in our domestic monasteries, nurturing the few souls in our spheres of influence. Loving them as unto the Lord. We can't bring healing to the impoverished masses huddled in their obvious suffering. We can't know what it feels like to fill the bellies and bind the wounds of the poor on foreign soil. Instead, we trust that giving a sippy cup of water to the least of these in our own kitchens is still doing His work.

Vatican II defined missionary activity in these terms: “The special end of this missionary activity is the evangelization and the implantation of the Church among peoples or groups in which it has not yet taken root.” By golly, I assure you, that work is not yet finished in my home:-). At first it seemed so black and white, but really, this mission is colored in shades of gray. A woman can feed them, clothe them, educate them, comfort them, but in this culture, she is not guaranteed that they will stay close to God all their lives. The thing about the first world? There is a myriad of shiny things with which the devil can distract. The mission field is physically comfortable and spiritually very, very dangerous. It is one that requires the constant care and attention of the missionary, lest they are all blinded by the gray. 

I'm not a very good multi-tasker. The task at home is quite enough. I cannot serve soup in Africa. Right now, I cannot even seek the suffering in the cities close to my home. I'm just a mom in the suburbs, ladling chowder at my dining room table. And my hair is turning gray. 

Now. Here. This is where I'm called. 

This is where I pray He finds me, offering hope, serving unconditional love, and counting gifts. I'm giving until I've nothing left to give. I have to trust His grace to fill in the large gaps I've left when I feebly offer these days of relative comfort. I have to hope it is indeed enough.

Click here for the  Recipe for Chubby Hubby Bars because someone in your household is probably in need of them;-)

About the photos: I have two friends who periodically encourage me to try to learn my camera and look at life through its lens. Independent of each other, they are firm believers that I am a very good candidate for this kind of Joy School. Today, I was a willing student of said school.

Late update: as I was uploading pictures, I was watching Paddy play. And there was this:

In the Mirror, Whose Image do You See?

A few weeks ago, some fine men with whom my son has coached basketball for the last six years organized a party to send him off to college. Christian has grown up with these men on his bench. He’s been both the assistant coach to their coach and the coach to their assistant. They’re good guys and a common acceptance of Jesus as the foundation of each of their lives has always been understood. But they’ve never really talked about it. Just lived it.

At the party, they honored Christian with a sweet video, some very kind speeches, plenty of food, and a giant trophy. Inscribed on the trophy was Ephesians 2:10:  For we are his handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for the good works that God has prepared in advance, that we should live in them.

They chose that verse for him and truly, it suits the time he has ahead of him as he transfers and begins his junior year of college away from home. That’s the whole point of education isn’t it? Isn’t our purpose in pursuing knowledge to humbly acknowledge that He crafted us for a specific purpose and He has specific things He wants us to do?

True joy in this life lies in discerning His purpose and living His will. It’s a verse not just for young men in college. It’s a verse for all of us. It’s a verse for living life intentionally, every day.

God created me to be someone. I want to be the person He intended. Not only do I want to live intentionally. I want to live His intention, not mine. In order to live a life of true integrity, I have to be the woman He created me to be, not the woman whom I think I want to be (this woman seems to morph and change all the time), nor the woman I think the world wants. God breathed life into me with a plan just for me. Life is all about becoming.

Becoming.

As we struggle with the insecurities that can come with navigating relationships, we can relinquish our need for approval. Just let it go. God has gifted each of us extraordinarily. We can embrace those gifts with confidence, unapologetically. So, too, we can see how our weaknesses, even our inabilities, are the nudges that push us towards exactly what He envisioned. It’s OK. He’s got this.

Not only has He created us uniquely for His purpose, He has created us in His image. Next time you stand in front of a mirror, look closely. Do you see it?  There, in front of you, can you see the brilliance of your Creator? No? Perhaps you can’t readily see it in your own reflection. If you sit in the quiet and put yourself in His presence, can you see it deep within you? Keep looking. It’s there.

We spend so much time in life trying to figure out who we really are, trying on someone else to see if it fits. It doesn’t. It will never work to pursue a false life, never be comfortable to be anything but genuine. True liberation lies in flinging ourselves into God’s perfect plan.It’s incredibly freeing to be whom He intended instead of a poor reflection of someone else’s influence over us. Becoming genuine brings peace.

Blessed John Paul II wrote:

“It is Jesus that you seek when you dream of happiness; He is waiting for you when nothing else you find satisfies you; He is the beauty to which you are so attracted; it is He who provoked you with that thirst for fullness that will not let you settle for compromise; it is He who urges you to shed the masks of a false life; it is He who reads in your heart your most genuine choices, the choices that others try to stifle. It is Jesus who stirs in you the desire to do something great with your lives, the will to follow an ideal, the refusal to allow yourselves to be ground down by mediocrity, the courage to commit yourselves humbly and patiently to improving yourselves and society, making the world more human and more fraternal.”

He has good works prepared especially for you, whether you are student on a campus in the mountains of Virginia or a middle-aged mom at her kitchen table. You can only do those works well if you are genuinely, seamlessly, and wholeheartedly the person He created you to be. Be who you are.

And off they go! But your job isn't finished, Mom:-)

The sun sinks into the mountains behind us as we drive away.Goodbyes are said. The van heads home a whole lot lighter. One seat is empty where just a few hours ago it was full. Clearly, we are well entrenched in this new season of life—the season of goodbyes. We first sent a child to college six years ago. He returned home a graduate and then lived with us a couple of years while he worked to save money. We said goodbye unexpectedly three years ago when a child left at fifteen to take up residency in Florida with the U.S. National Team. We had four days to prepare for that leavetaking. He, too, returned.

For awhile, all nine children lived under one roof.

 

Late last December, the eldest left home again. Hard-earned money invested in a home of his own, he took a wife and left our home to create a family of his own. Two weeks later, his brother left for college. Yesterday, another brother followed. “The big boys,” as they’ve been called collectively since the youngest was two, have all gone. It’s eerily quiet in my house this morning, though six children remain.

I think it a happy liturgical blessing that the Church prepares for the feasts of St. Monica and St. Augustine in the last weeks of summer. Just as we send our children out into the world—whether to kindergarten or college—we have the reassurance that comes with praying novenas for the intercession of a mother-son pair whose faith is breathtaking.

St. Monica is the mother of St. Augustine. Her story is so worth the time of every mother. The brief version is that Monica was the wife of a pagan, who had a violent temper and a problem with alcohol. His mother was a difficult, irritable woman, who lived with the couple. Monica bore them patiently and with kindness. She prayed for their conversions and ultimately, they both died Christians.

Monica was also the mother of least three children who survived infancy. Augustine, her eldest, was a bit of a handful. He was a wild child who sorely tested her limits with immoral living and heretical philosophies. Monica stayed close to him and prayed mightily for his conversion. In the end, St. Augustine, under the direction of St. Ambrose, was baptized and grew into his vocation as one the greatest saints ever and a Doctor of the Church.

As I’ve witnessed the grief of mothers as they send their children off to school, I’ve noticed several things. The first is that every woman comes to this time a little differently. For some women, the grief is wide and deep and raw. I’ve seen that this is not the case for everyone. Unfortunately, a woman who aches cannot assume she will be supported and consoled. There is the real possibility that someone will scoff. This is unfortunate, because mothers do need community. The experience of launching a child into the world is not unlike the experience of childbirth. Birthing became a much happier, more humane experience when women began to share collective experiences and to advocate for measures that would bring comfort and support. So, too, we need to empathize with one another in the transition and the sending forth of our children from homes.

 

I’ve listened intently to other women this time around. Eyes wide open and ears alert, I’ve noticed a trend. Mothers worry that they haven’t done enough. As her daughter leaves for college, you give a mom a hug and assure her that she’s done a good job and all will be well and she returns your well-intentioned words of encouragement with wild-eyed panic. She worries. She worries about all the conversations they never got around to having. She worries about all the lessons in faith she never taught. She worries about all the moments of instruction and guidance and reassurance that slipped through her fingers. Was it enough? Did she do enough? Now that her job is over, will everything be ok? Sometimes, the grief upon leaving is commensurate with a mother’s fear that she has somehow failed to adequately prepare her child for the day of departure.

We are certain—because we know our child so well and we love her so fiercely—that it is not enough. We are certain that we’ve forgotten something. There’s more to do, more to say, more to love. And there is.

Here’s a hint, mom. It’s not over.

We don’t stop mothering when they leave home. God’s not finished and neither are you. St. Monica prayed for her son for seventeen years after she kicked him out of her house. She stuck close. He left Tagaste for Rome and she followed him there. She stay tuned into him, engaged in his life, and was prayerfully incessant. She wasn’t a nagging mother (or nagging wife, for that matter). Instead, she was a faith-filled servant of God who never stopped loving and was relentless in her firm resolve to live the Gospel. She was a teacher, a role model, and an agent of change in the conversion of people she loved well past their childhoods.

It’s not over.

It’s not too late. You aren’t finished mothering. Indeed, in many ways, it’s just begun. One of the saddest stories I’ve ever known is the story told by a grown woman whose parents were “finished” when they left her at college. They considered their “jobs” done. It’s not a job. It’s a vocation. Parenting is for a lifetime. In this age of entitlement, one thing is certain. If there is anything—anything—to which a grown child is entitled, it is the ongoing prayers of his parents and the sweet assurance that they will forever hold him tightly in their hearts. Whatever lies ahead, no matter where he goes and what he does, no matter the challenges, we will dedicate ourselves with confidence to the gentle kindness and firmness of conviction that St. Monica brought to mothering adult children.

Hope in the Morning

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The day began with Mike vlounteering to take Nick to soccer on his way to work. Soccer is absolutely not on Mike's way to the office, but he was being really sweet and I took him up on it. The coach always gets there 15 minutes early so Mike planned to drop Nick and dash to work. 

I gave him the address (all these fields are new to us since we've just switched leagues), and off they went.

To the wrong field.

I had given him the address of the field where Stephen trains tomorrow. Go me! I'd looked up all my travel desitinations before the week began...

They got there eventually. Mike apologized on my behalf.

And then he called me and spoke sweet, unmerited words of grace.

It seems like a very good morning to unplug, refill pots of watercolor, and paint some hope into the week ahead.

Christian leaves tomorrow. I'll be back in this space on Wednesday.

My prayer for each of you is for someone to speak grace into your day.