Recently my husband was home on a Saturday which he found particularly difficult. The weather was rainy; we were stuck inside. He tried to keep busy but the children were bored and cranky. He was all too glad to put us to bed that night.
The reality of motherhood for me is that a lot of days are about taking something particularly bland or small or seemingly insignificant and choosing to make it enough for that day. Some days seem to drag on so I try to break up each day into sections. Some days I only have enough energy to schedule breakfast, lunch and a nap time in the afternoon. Other days I begin the day with coffee and a three mile run. Then I take the children to the zoo followed by a movie at home in the afternoon. Those days I feel amazing and energetic and worthwhile. The bland days? Not so much.
Because of these experiences, I am more impressed with people who faithfully show up every day (even if life offers mediocrity) rather than people who drink Red Bull, bench press twice their weight and own three companies.
The joy of motherhood is this: If you lay down your life, you will find it again. If you give your life for another, you will find that a seed is planted.
If you find yourself crying in the bathroom because your ears are ringing with mayhem and monotony, I have good news: That is death. And the good news about death is that it has no hold on the person who follows Jesus the grave-spurner. Death heralds resurrection.
Many people try to paint Jesus as an ascetic. Plain. Boring. Too heavenly minded for any earthly good.
But here is how I see Jesus: He took corneas which refused to refract light and opened the floodgates of the spectrum.
He took suffering and made it into compost. Then he planted a seed and watched it grow even more lovely than without the suffering.
He turned scars into beauty marks.
He turned victims into vivacious, life-loving people.
His creation doesn't stop ever. Ever the Creator, ever the Renewer.
He takes autistic children and uses their quirky sense of communication to change the world, turning it topsy turvy.
He takes tired churches and breathes new life into them.
He tells retired people to roll up their sleeves because he has some amazing adventures planned.
He has done marvelous things in my life.
He spared my husband when he was on a plane from Baltimore to Chicago on the morning of September 11th.
He has given me strength during post-partum depression.
He has given me two lovely, interesting, fantastic daughters even though when I was in college I prayed that I would never have children. (Thank God he didn't answer that prayer with a yes.)
He has taught me how to love difficult people, how to stay during a crisis and how to choose life even though my body bore death.
He has kept the fire of dreams in my heart.
I tried to embrace death, but it doesn't stick to people who love Jesus.
Because for me the Christian faith is not about one big momentous death. It's about a thousand tiny deaths, a thousand miniscule disappointments, a hundred thousand irritants and a myriad of sadnesses turned into countless "do-overs" and redemptions and resurrections.
If you go into today wondering what you will create, that is something admirable.
But if you go into a day which looks bleak and wearisome and wonder what redemptions will take place, that is celebratory.
It's a day which has held bickering children and cranky mothers and threadbare fathers getting indigestion over a burnt dinner and deciding to stop everything, make ice cream cones and go swing on the outside playset.
It's a man who has no hope left in his resume and little hope of getting a job take a portion of his unemployment check, smile cheekily and give it away. "If we're going down, let's go down in a blaze of glory."
It's artistic me, shunning the mediocrity of laundry and doing it anyway.
A thousand deaths, a thousand resurrections.
It's why our Creator is also our Redeemer and our Friend.