Why I didn’t make it to small group last week

May 17, 2012 By michaboyett 6 Comments

It was a good day, but a long one: the house in disarray. Another week where we planned to go to our small group from church, where I made dinner early and managed to bring the boys in early from outside (one tantrum in the process but I only got bit once). August hates small group. We went for the first time five weeks ago and my oldest boy decided he’d never go back. Since then, Chris has gone alone. Staying up an hour past bedtime is hard enough on the boys, but if August is crying and screaming all day prior to going, it’s hard for me to work up the gumption to get us there. I know if we go, I’ll end up staying in the child care room all night and I’d rather stay home, go to bed, especially if I’ve been out another night that week at writer’s group or preschool co-op meeting or the college freshman Bible study I lead.

But this past week, I’d been home at night; I’d gotten rest. So I talked up small group. August was not excited but his tears were less pronounced and I promised I would stay with him until he felt comfortable. I made the promise, knowing that I might be signing myself up for months of childcare attending, instead of actually being with the adults I’ve been trying to get to know.

So, when the boys were sitting for dinner at 5:45 and the phone rang, I was surprised to hear from Chris that he couldn’t get home in time. Some emergency issue had come up at work. He’d be home late.

I hung up the phone, relieved that my already-crashing baby would make it to bed by 7:30. I was relieved I could catch up on laundry and make an early bedtime.

In my quest to define a new kind of spirituality for the mother whose life cannot fit the Christian plan for spiritual growth, I’ve had several conversations with other women about the struggle to follow Christ, knowing that their lives do not look “faithful.” The faithful life I grew up in always included an abundance of church attendance.

I’m beginning to accept that even if other moms of small children have found a way to be in a small group: I don’t have to. For whatever reason, I have a kid with a strong personality who had “a bit of an attitude” with the childcare woman at small group five weeks ago. I have the boy who is completely potty trained but refuses to go in public, who screams and cries when the children are all walked down the hall to the bathroom. I have a 14-month-old who still takes a 5 pm nap and, miraculously, falls asleep for the night at 7:30.

Sometimes I wonder, how did my mother do it? She taught school all day then took us to church in the evening, when she was in Bible study or handbell choir and I was in Mission Friends and childcare till 8:30 pm? Wasn’t she exhausted? How did she manage to get to church Sunday mornings, Sunday nights and Wednesday nights? What about all those five-nights-in-a-row revival services? How did we get our homework done? How did we sleep?

I grew up in a church that was all about children’s programming. I did some wonderfully fun things and I learned all about missionaries all over the world. I smiled through competitions of who could leaf the onionskin Bible pages fastest. I memorized scripture, visited sick kids in hospitals, watched Christian videos, ate popcorn, had outdoor water fights, listened to Bible stories, built a clay sculpture of the Old Testament Tabernacle, and once a month slipped my two dollar tithe into the envelope with my name printed on it.

But I’m getting the sense that my boys’ experience of church will be very different from that of my childhood.

That’s not because I don’t agree with my church upbringing. I thank God for the deep knowledge of scripture I was given, how my heart lived among the words of the Bible. I’m thankful for the letters I wrote to the missionary in Hong Kong, how much bigger my world was when, as a four-year-old, I learned about how rice was grown in China. I’m thankful for a second home inside the church hallways, for the comfort of my great big Southern Baptist childhood culture, for the friendship of the adults who ministered to me.

But I find myself in a different place: I want to be the one to teach my kids theology. Honestly, I don’t trust what they’ll hear from others. I was a highly sensitive kid who still carries unhealthy ideas about God in my gut, ideas that someone taught me, ideas my parents didn’t hold. I want my sons’ upbringing in the church to teach them about community and mission. I want them to see us living with others in holy friendships: loving each other, praying together, carrying each other through sorrow and struggle. I want mission to happen as a family, not separate from one another in our age-appropriate programs. I want church to look like a community of people living faith in the messy, beautiful, confusing way faith happens.

Growing up I saw faithfulness in our family’s commitment to the order and sweet rhythms of church life; our church life right now is more chaotic, but it is sweet also in how we fill our hours with the lives of others.

And I know that’s not prescriptive. Being a mother has been a long journey of letting go of my need to please and impress. I want you to think I’m a good mom. I want you to think I care about being in small group. I want to be strong and get my kids to church, even if they don’t like it!

And then I take a deep breath and say: Oh, my kid is deathly afraid of the childcare worker and my other kid needs sleep, and I am out on Monday nights and Thursday nights already. And this may feel like a long season of life, but it’s really just a flash of a season. So, if I don’t make it to small group, perhaps I’m practicing a different sort of spiritual discipline, the kind where I determine not to impress you, the kind where I get rest and read stories to my kids and trust that when I beg God to hold tight to my boys, God is doing it in his own way, while they sleep and while they sit with me on Wednesday nights on the couch and giggle.

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{Practicing Benedict} The Finale: A Beginning

May 16, 2012 By michaboyett 12 Comments

The purpose for which we have written this rule is to make it clear that by observing it in our monasteries we can at least achieve the first steps in virtue and good monastic practice. Anyone, however, who wished to press on towards the highest standards of monastic life may turn to the teachings of the holy Fathers, which can lead those who follow them to the very heights of perfection. Indeed, what page, what saying from the sacred scriptures of the Old and New Testaments is not given us by the authority of God as reliable guidance for our lives on earth? … We, however, can only blush with shame when we reflect on the negligence and inadequacy of the monastic lives we lead.

Whoever you may be, then, in your eagerness to reach your Father’s home in heaven, be faithful with Christ’s help to this small Rule which is only a beginning. Starting from there you may in the end aim at the greater heights of monastic teaching and virtue in the works which we have mentioned above and with God’s help you will then be able to reach those heights yourself. Amen.

-The Rule of St. Benedict, Chapter 73 (emphasis mine)

 

I have this memory of sitting at my computer during August’s naptime six weeks into our move to San Francisco. I had just spent the first 45 minutes of his nap building an Ikea desk. I did it backwards the first time and had to take it apart. Then, I drilled and grunted and propped that delicate fake-wood into its proper settings and set that cheap table on its feet. I placed two things upon it: my computer and my Benedictine Handbook.

Then I opened the screen to check in with my writerly friends from grad school. We were a group of women who had spent Thursday nights together throughout those three years in the early 2000’s. We’d get dinner and talk poetry while drinking tea. We had a little closed blog back then where we would post about what we were reading or writing. My friends were publishing books and teaching writing workshops and writing interesting essays on poetry and feminism. And I was wiping my kid’s butt. Not reading. And definitely not writing.

That afternoon, I opened the laptop to see a thread from a friend about her stressful life situation. She was struggling through an incredibly difficult season: unsure of the future of her marriage, trying to find a permanent teaching position, balancing her writing and her adjunct jobs and raising a toddler. She made a statement in her frustration. She said, “If only I could be some Stepford Wife and let somebody else take care of me!”

That’s all she said. She didn’t purposefully make fun of me. She was hurting and I was the selfish one. And you better believe I cried for myself. I sat at that new Ikea desk, my face smashed into the white plastic wood, and cried. I wept and asked God, “Is that all I am? Am I a lazy wife who lets my husband earn the money and take care of me? Am I useless? Am I wasting my gifts here in my home, washing the dishes and playing on the floor with my kid, making grilled cheese sandwiches?”

I had only just then begun my journey with St. Benedict. I was asking God to show me how to find purpose in this life at home. I was asking God how I was supposed to feel like this staying home business had any value compared to the work I had been in full time ministry just months before. I was looking at myself and my days alone with August and my loneliness in this new city, and I was gut-sobbing, “Please God, give me some help here. I don’t know where the joy is.”

And do you know how God used St. Benedict in my life? God began to daily lift up that veil where I was hiding my Crazy. Slowly, I heard words and phrases like: humility, stability, obedience, hospitality, heartfelt repentance, hurrying to the work of God, the spirit of silence, sincere and unassuming affection, prayer that should normally be short, words that are weighty and restrained…

* * *

Over time, I began to sense a change in my guts: It was a paradigm shift. It was as if I was, for the first time, actually believing Jesus when he spoke of a new way of seeing value. What mattered was not my own power in the world, my own ability to provide for myself or impress strangers with my usefulness in life, or, even, to be entertained in my monotonous day. What mattered was that I had a miraculous invitation to join the servants of the Kingdom of God in the work of Jesus, the work that no one in their right minds wants to do. I had the opportunity to wash dishes with a song on my lips, to stare in utter gratitude at the tiny fingers stacking those wooden colored blocks, to clean and pick up and sing and rock and bandage ouchies and pick up again. I was learning to make a stable place for my son in the midst of our unstable life post cross-country move. I was honored to learn the glory of wholeheartedness, to grasp the miracle that my life did not have to be externally impressive to be significant in God’s kingdom.

And do you know what happened? I learned to pray at that desk. Writing words on paper, leaning over my copy of Benedict’s Rule with sticky notes on the wall in front of me that said things like, “Count nothing more important than the love you should cherish for Christ,” (RSB, chapter 4) and “Humility is very slow business, if it’s authentic” (Michael Casey, Guide to Living in the Truth, via Monk Habits for Everyday People by Dennis Olkham).

I have learned a secret, whispered to me via Holy Spirit over the long, long path of 1500 years. It’s a secret truth that God whsipered in the scripture first, a secret I needed a friend like Benedict to speak louder so it broke through all that flesh, so it pebble-sank into my heart:

“In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength…” (Isaiah 30:15)

Oh, friend, “whoever you may be,” may we be eager to run toward the full hearts God has always intended for us. May we quiet the voices spouting every kind of lie to our already bare-threaded souls. When we hear the words that tear our patched up psyches, may we learn the gift of gratitude and grace, and embrace those moments when we learn to give, when we learn to serve the least among us. May we find in them Christ. May we remember that “with Christ’s help” this “small Rule… is only a beginning.”

* * *

 

This is my last post in the {Practicing Benedict} series. Thanks for walking with me through it. I promise that Benedict will still be making some regular guest appearances around here and I’ll have a button up soon linking to every post in the series.

 

 

 

 

 

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On Sweetness and Mother’s Day

May 14, 2012 By michaboyett 2 Comments

Copyright © 2012 Erin Molloy Photography

It’s Mother’s Day morning and last night was one of those up and down kinds of sleeps. Chris and I are at the stage where we go to bed in the unknowing: will the boys sleep all night? Will they wake four times? Last night August had to pee, then he couldn’t go back to sleep. Then he still couldn’t go back to sleep. And, then he really couldn’t go back to sleep. Each trip to his room, I found myself accidentally kicking my leg against something: a laundry basket, a couch.

By 5:45 when Brooksie was crying, I was so fuzzy and frantic (my usually style of mid-night waking) that I literally ran into the doorframe in our room. I slammed my cheekbone loud enough that Chris jumped up and I moaned and fell back on the bed. (He went to check on Brooksie.)

So, sleeping in on Mother’s Day morning is not only called for, it’s fitting. I’m sort of a mess this morning, what with my bruised cheekbone and puffy eyes (I accidentally got cucumber juice in them while cooking Friday night and they don’t take kindly to cucumbers. Remind me to tell you a great story about that sometime.)

I’ve been reading in bed with coffee by my side, brought to me by Christopher in my favorite bright red mug. And my boys are in and out. Brooksie loves to waddle in and gaze flirtatious and mischievous at me. He raises his eyebrows, makes a serious face, then smiles and almost laughs and waddles away. So far during my reading time, he has come in to find a waded up receipt (which he played with for five minutes, carrying it back and forth from my room to the kitchen), a green pen (from which he couldn’t remove the cap, thankfully. He used it to “comb” Ezra the Super Cat, who will take any form of attention he can get, even when it involves a green pen in the hands of a one-year-old.). Now, Brooksie is back in the room bare-handed. He walks to the side table, shakes the lamp a few times while I remind him how that’s not a good idea. And then he’s pinching his pointer and thumb together and touching the table. He’s amazed with this development, that his fingers can gather and make a cone of sorts, that he can push them against the table and experience some sort of finger-sensation. He looks at me and smiles. Then he opens his hand and looks inside at his palm. He does some assessments. He’s happy with what he sees. His palm is good, he decides. Then he’s out of the room again. Off to something new.

Soon, Chris calls me to the kitchen where my favorite meals is being served: Eggs Benedict (and I promise my love for the creamy sauce has nothing to do with my love for the saint). Chris makes it for me every Mother’s Day, every birthday. Homemade hollandaise stirred perfectly over boiling water. Today, though, the lemon is moldy and there is nothing Chris can do to replace it. The sauce doesn’t congeal and it doesn’t help that August is crying on the couch. (His morning show on Netflix has been buffering for ages.)

So I enter the kitchen in my pjs, hair in a pile on my head, cheek beaten by the doorframe, eyes puffy from the Cucumber Incident. August is crying about the lack of “Busytown Mysteries” and my husband hands me a mimosa, because that’s just the sort of thing he does. And I think how all of it is perfect: the uncongealed hollandaise, the frustrated three-year-old, the baby astounded by his own hands.

We sit at the table to pray and just before we bow our heads, August whispers to Chris across the table: “Should we get Mama’s flowers?”

“Let’s pray first,” my husband says. And they do, thankful for me.

Then they slip away and return with orchids in a vase. August choose them, he says: yellow, my favorite color.

And on the card: A list of questions Chris asked the boys (of course only one of them could answer):

  1. What is you favorite part of Mama? A: Leaning on her belly.
  2. What is your favorite thing to do with Mommy? A: Play cars
  3. How do you show Mommy you love her? A: This answer is acted out: He squeezes the chair with his arms.
  4. What do you want to say to Mama? A: Thank you
  5. For what? A: She lets me get frozen yogurt even though I didn’t get it for my dessert

 
Also this morning, during the lazy coffee drinking in bed, I read words about sweetness in Lauren Winner’s book Still. They’re the words of a twelfth-century Cistercian named Baldwin of Forde. He says:

“Jesus is sweet…He is sweet in prayer, sweet in speech, sweet in reading, sweet in contemplation, sweet in compunction, and in the jubilation of the heart. He is sweet in the mouth, sweet in the heart, sweet in love; he is the love of sweetness and the sweetness of love…Those who have tasted of him grow hungry, and those who are hungry will be satisfied and the sated will cry out the memory of his abundant sweetness.”

And I think: Is there a better word for this moment, this time in my life while these babies learn to be themselves and my husband loves me better and better, while all at once I feel so young and still so rich with age? Sweetness.

Oh, Jesus, we cry at the memory of your abundant sweetness.

 

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Fresh flowers with dew: A Mother’s Day reflection

May 10, 2012 By michaboyett 2 Comments

Today, because I spent last night exhausted and grumpy–it was one of those loooong days of mothering–I’m reposting what I wrote for Mother’s Day last year. As I reread this post, I was surprised that I had been thinking about earnestness vs “snarky emotionlessness” even then. Happy Mother’s Day to the mamas out there. Eat some chocolate and go to bed early, okay?

* * *

http://vmburkhardt.tumblr.com via Pinterest

 

Sunday is Mother’s Day. Chris’ step-mom just sent me a Mother’s Day letter her grandfather had written to his mother from a foxhole in World War I. It was so gentle hearted and earnest. He even told his “Mother dear” that come morning he would “steal out from my little dugout and take some fresh flowers with dew and I’ll wear them all day long and each time these little bells tinkle over my heart they will be chiming my love for you.”

Of course, our culture cringes at earnestness. I’m convinced that our ironic snarky emotionlessness is our greatest fault as a generation. I’m just as guilty as anyone in sarcastic love-showing. I’m much more comfortable telling a friend I love them and then adding in a little snide joke just so the love doesn’t get too uncomfortable.

But, there’s something in a mother’s heart that longs for her grown son, away at war in a foxhole, to pick some flowers (sprinkled with dew if possible) and wear them all day in her honor. Doesn’t that just choke your heart up a little?

A couple of months ago I had a conversation with a friend who was sharing a little about the suicide of a close friend of his. It had been almost a year since his friend had died and he was contemplating calling the man’s mother. My friend said, “Micha, she must have such a feeling of rejection. To lose a child that way, even a grown one–must feel like all you gave was for nothing.”

That caught me off guard. I’d never gone farther in my mind than the immediate suffering of that kind of loss. I’d never considered how a mother might feel as though every thing she had provided for that child (his very life!) was not only unappreciated but rejected.

I looked at my friend and considered the process I was in (still am in) of teaching August to use the potty. I thought of the hours and days spent coaxing and convincing, of cleaning poop out of his underwear, the stories read and told on the potty, the stickers—all for what? To make him a man who can thrive in this world. To grow him up.

Of course, we don’t keep count of what we do for our children. It’s ridiculous and rarely even something we consider (except on really bad days!). But that thought hasn’t left me.

I don’t need my kids to thank me. What I long for is for them to take what I’ve given them and multiply it: I want them to give themselves away in service. I long for them to use the minds I’ve whispered the ABC’s into. I hope the hours we spend pretending will build them into men who create beautiful things. I’m teaching August to be kind to friends, to share, to introduce himself to someone new. My hope is that he’ll love people, hold tight to dear friendships, and forgive with sincerity.

And I hope that the moments I wait for him in the park while he picks and picks and picks flowers, off in some unknown toddler world, will result in the kind of grown son who picks early morning dew coated flowers in my honor on Mother’s Day, wherever he is: foxhole or not.

 

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