Independence

I was surprised to find, two weeks ago, upon walking into the kitchen, that it was clean. Elphine has basically been the person who is always assigned that job, though not exclusively, for a couple of years. She started out just unloading the dishwasher onto the table. Then Alouicious unloaded and she put the stuff away. Then she began to load the dishwasher. Then, at the beginning of this year, I would tell her to “clean it” which meant the whole room, counters, floor, dishes, as well as taking all the stuff that everyone dumps there and putting it all away. Frequently she would be on the receiving end of irritation and shouting (I know, I'm a bad parent, I sin all the time) because she would take four hours, or something awful, to “organize”–as in move the dirty dishes around instead of just putting them in the dishwasher, and then put them in without rinsing them first, and then just wander away to do something else leaving piles of despaire behind her. It's such a gradual thing. I guess she's been getting more effecient and capable and not only knows what the task is but can do it, to completion.

After looking around in stunned silence at how clean it was, I turned my gaze to her brother and realized that there is more work to do. It's really too bad. So so so tragic even. But it must needs that Elphine graduate to something else and that her slow, whiny, recrimminating brother take her place. A grand rearrangement is taking place this week and next. Elphine will enter the long road of learning how to really do laundry, the way she has the kitchen. Alouicious will learn to do the kitchen. Romulus will take over the kitty litter. Marigold will move up to unloading the dishwasher and Gladys to putting dishes away. The first day of this new system was ghastly. Discouraging and ghastly. The house, which has begun to function in some kind of order and regularity, descended immediately into chaos as everyone began to do new jobs very badly and with a lot of complaining. Including me. I quietly complained a lot.

And yet, o my soul, I know that if we don't shift around, and everyone learn to do new things, I will have sinned against my offspring. They have to leave me knowing the whole realm of household and personal care. They have to know how to feed and clothe themselves, how to vacuum and clean up, how to have people over and care for them, how to play music, how to read and write and count, how to think and argue, how to serve others and not only themselves. The list is so vast.

And it all involves pushing them towards that great American virtue, Self Reliance–to be able to work hard at something and succeed, to have the abilities and skills and motivation to go out and do something interesting. They can't always be relying on me, or even each other, they have to be internally motivated towards some kind of goal. From my perspective, any goal that is upstanding, honorable, and gets them out of my house and off my bank account.

And yet, every step of the way, the greater and more dreadful lesson, the lesson that the whole world, America included, reviles and rejects, is that all their self reliance and achievement is as nothing if they do not rely completely and totally on God. They may save themselves materially, but they cannot save their own souls. They may work hard, but they cannot work their way into the presence of holiness. They may succeed at a task, but they cannot stand before God and expect to be praised for doing what they only ought to have done. The lesson, every moment of every day, is that they must always be falling on the mercy of God for grace and love and forgiveness and mercy.

It's a lesson I dislike immensely. I hate collapsing in the failure of my own sin and having to tell God that I tried to do it my own way and failed, that the failure was the least of it, that my motivations were wrong, that I shouldn't have even been trying to do it in the first place, but should have started in prayer and ended in thanksgiving, instead of starting in self reliance and ending in bitterness. But the lesson is true. And I cannot avoid it in myself or in my children. It is the lesson of life, and light, and hope for the world. And so today, Independence Day, we will celebrate God's greatest gifts, including the freedom to talk about God at all, and blog, and read and think and work hard. And tomorrow we will all try again.