A few days after the super bowl, inspired by the farmer commercial, one of my favorite authors wrote a blog post titled "So God Made a Mother". It really spoke to me. I often feel as though I need to do something BIG with this one life that I have. Sadly, I fail to see the "big" in the tucking-ins and the elbow bandaging and the shoe tying lessons. This post was a reminder that these small things are the biggest things that I can be doing for the Lord during this season of my life. Today I am thankful for Super Bowl commercials and for subtle reminders that "raising generations matter and weaving families matters and tying heart strings matters and these people here matter." And this is BIG!
Blog Excerpt from A Holy Experience with God Feb. 4 2013:
I need
someone to get up at midnight and scoop the most fragile of humanity close to
her warmth and rock though she can hardly stand and nourish though she’s mostly
sleep-starved and change the diaper and the sheets and the leaked on, leaked
through, and leaked down clothes though she’ll have to change them in the
morning and next week and that won’t change for years.
So God
made a Mother.
Then
God had said I need somebody with a strong heart. Strong enough for toddler tantrums and teenage testing, yet
broken enough to fall on her knees and pray, pray, pray. Someone who knows that in every hard place is exactly where you extend grace, who looks a hopeful child in the eye and says yes, even though she knows every
yes means a mess but this is how you bless, who has the courage to keep letting go because she’s
holding on to Me.
So God made a mother.
God
said I need somebody who can shape a soul and find shoes on Sunday mornings and
get grass stains out of Levis. And make dinner out of nothing and do it again
79,678 times, and keep kids off the road and out of the toilet and in clean
underwear and mainly alive though she’s mainly losing her mind and will put in
an 80 hour week by Wednesday night and just do one more load of laundry. And
one more sink of crusted burnt pots.
And keep on going another eighty hours because
raising generations matters and weaving families matters and tying heart
strings matters and these people here matter.
So God made a mother…
It had
to be somebody who could comb back pigtails and tie up skates just-right tight. Who could pretend she remembered
algebra and how to get home from here and that really, she was just fine, that
it must just be the silly onions. Somebody who would run for the catch, jump on a trampoline
and play one fierce game of soccer and not give a thought to all those labors
and her weak pelvic floor. Somebody who’d stay up late with a science project
that never ends, who’d get up early for the game in the rain, somebody who’d
wave at the door until the taillights were out of sight and still be smiling
brave.
So God
made a mother.
It had
to be somebody willing to keep loving when it made no
sense because that’s what love does. Somebody who knew
that patience is a willingness to suffer. That joy is always
possible because there is always, always something to be thankful for.
And
that life is not an
emergency but a gift — so just. slow. down. There are children at
play here and we don’t want anyone to get hurt and the hurry makes us hurt. Somebody willing to feed and lead, lay
down her life and pick up her cross, give of her time because they have her
heart. Someone who knows that we all blow it — and
what matters is what we then do after. Someone who could humble herself into the tender sorry that
covers a multitude of sins. And
who’d bow her head at night over the girl asleep with the doll in the crook of
her arm — and thank her Father for this hidden life that’s the turning gear for
the a whole spinning world.
So God made a mother.
