What Tasks She Was Given

Yesterday, in my advent reading, I considered Mary.
I spent awhile thinking bout her,
and what tasks she was given to serve the Lord in
-- the significance of motherhood.

The holiness of gestating and birthing
and breastfeeding Jesus in all its mess.
Diaper changes, and potty training.
Cooking for Him, cutting up His food.
Holding His hand, and walking slowly for His short, young legs.
Giving Him His bath, tucking Him into bed.
Getting Jesus a drink of water,
and sitting down to eat with Him at the table.
Sewing for Him;
knitting for Him;
mending His torn clothes.
Kissing boo boos, and cleaning out skinned knees.
Planting, watering, and weeding the vegetable garden.
Cutting up a chicken for dinner.
Standing by and watching while they hurt Him.
Weeping at the cross, and preparing His body for burial.

These tasks, these human tasks,
so often feel outside the service of God.
Many of them are done alone.
There's no audience for this service -- no audience but Him.
This was Mary's calling -- the great purpose for her life.
Her most holy and intimate ministry to the Lord.
They are holy things when they are done for Him.
Jesus said that a cup of water given in His name has a reward waiting.
How many cups of water do you suppose she fetched for Him?

"He who receives you receives Me," He said to His disciples,
"and he who receives Me receives Him who sent Me."
Who opened her life to receive Him more than she did?
Years after she answered, "Behold the maidservant of the Lord!
Let it be to me according to your word,"
she was still enduring snide innuendos by religious people.
Her son, 'that Holy One', always looked at as tarnished by evil minds.

This woman, young and hopeful, betrothed, and a virgin --
said yes to the disruption of her life and her plans.
She gave herself entirely, body and soul, to the will of God.
No 'after I've filled up my bucket list' from her.
In her virginity, she welcomed Him.
Before her marriage, and before her home was established.
Have some, in welcoming strangers, entertained angels?
Consider Who she welcomed in to her very body.
But every one of us has the opportunity to serve Him.
Jesus said, "Whoever does the will of My Father in heaven
is My brother and sister and mother."
Oh, that I would respond like she did --
she who is highly favored,
and blessed among women,
and who found favor with God.

The Limbs Lopped Off

We add things in to our lives one at a time -- small things.
Baking bread every other day.
A front porch and a fence that lets the kids run
while we drink coffee together.
Buying the organic flour from the bulk bins at the natural grocery store.
Daddy making pizza from scratch on Fridays.
Batches of scones every Saturday morning.
The making of the yogurt.
The laundry washing and drying and folding and putting away.
The clothesline.
The walks in the woods, and the lunches by the water.
The music we play,
and the friends we pray with.
Watering the houseplants.
Where and how we read our Bibles.
We settle into our grooves,
weeding out the things that don't work for us,
and adjusting each thing that does until it's a good fit.

Several times in our twenty years of marriage,
our life has gotten lost, it feels like.
A baby is born, and the baking ceases.
The dishes go undone,
because we haven't found our new rhythm yet.
The baby cries when it's time for cooking,
and we eat McDonald's, because everyone is hungry.

There's a job loss, and a forced move,
and our pictures are packed away,
and we don't see us on the walls anymore.
Are we still here
if we don't see ourselves smiling together anymore on the walls?

Just as we finish painting the oppressive walls
we were too tired to paint at first,
and we take the pictures out of their boxes,
and remember ourselves in the smiling frames,
and breathe again in the salt air,
holding hands on the beach,
and seeing the kids smile and run,
a call comes that we know must be answered,
and we pack up the music again.
We don't hear the songs of our life for awhile.

We miss ourselves.
The rhythm of the bread and the music and the yogurt and granola.
The way we work and the way we play.
The breathing and the writing and the smiling family photos.
The knitting of our days, one by one, into fabric.

Sometimes it's years before the pictures go back up,
and I take them out to look at them, and to hang them up,
and the children in the picture aren't with me anymore.
My babies with their curls are men and women now.
Almost, anyway.
And their siblings haven't seen their infant perfection,
because the pictures weren't on the walls
for the first few years of their lives.
And we lived in other places that they don't know.
And we were another family that they never met.
And I struggle not to cry
because other people stay in the same places always,
never putting their pictures and their music and their baking in a box.
It seems like they have always been untrimmed and unpruned,
and I grieve the limbs we had lopped off.

So many new grocery stores to learn,
and friendships to build,
and green places to find,
and we had to find them without our pictures on the walls.