"...He invited Martha to Leave the kitchen for
a while and share in the better part," Joanna Weaver. from Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World.
Yesterday, because Finny wasn’t feeling well, we were ready
for school early, had a half an hour of un-urgent time to spend before we had
to get coats on and head out the door.
Charlie came running into the kitchen and I scooped him up, pressing my
face deep into his cheek, soft and warm.
I spotted a puzzle on the counter. I wanted to sit down with him and work on
it. I knew he would like that too. “Charlie, want to do the pirate puzzle with
me?”
“Yes, I do want to do the pirate puzzle with you!” Charlie, an English teacher’s dream, gives
all his answers in complete sentences.
And then I remembered:
the laundry. I needed to keep it
moving. There were still two or three
baskets down there that needed to go in.
I could fold a load now, switch it out, keep it moving.
“Ok, let’s do the puzzle.
Let me just switch out the laundry real quick first and then we’ll do
it.”
But we never did the puzzle.
By the time I got the laundry folded, there was not enough time to start
and finish the puzzle. So we got in the
car and I dropped him off at school, and he played there, with teachers and
kids, but not with me.Work, in my mind, must always come before play. Checking emails must always come before reading my novel, doing the dishes must always come before sitting on the couch. I am conscientious and conscientious is good.
Or is it?
Last winter after our move, I became so overwhelmed by all
that I thought I had to do that I had something akin to a nervous breakdown. Stressed and weary, my worry began to consume
all my thinking and I began to have panic attacks. It was paralyzing. Horrifying.
The thought that would bring me to my knees is: I’m
losing my mind. And that’s a dark
and dangerous thought to have. It makes
you feel caged, takes your breath away.
Eventually I was forced to drop everything and address my
mental health. I couldn’t go on unless I
took action and resolved my troubled mind.
I started an antidepressant and began seeing a talk therapist.
She was so matter-of-fact:
Of course you’re feeling like
this. This is hard, and you’ve been trying
to do everything yourself.
She asked me an important question: What
did you look forward to about being a mother?
Why did you want to do it?
I knew the answer right away. I wanted to play. I wanted to snuggle and tickle. I wanted to teach and learn. I wanted to sit on the floor with them and do
puzzles. Snuggle on the couch with them
and read stories. I wanted to sit at
their feet and take them all in.
I did not want all the work.
I didn’t want to be doing a constant load of laundry, 24 hour kitchen
service, meal planning, grocery shopping, nagging, harping, time-keeping, battery
changing, book taping, and constantly, constantly picking up and putting away
pieces and pieces and pieces of toys. I
didn’t want to sort clothes and books. I
didn’t want to keep track of the water bottles, the snack cups, the dragons,
the watch, the hats, the mittens, the socks—where do the socks always disappear
to right before it’s time to go?
And I also didn’t want to constantly, constantly be trying
desperately to be keeping up with my emails.
And so I lost it. The
joy. The idea of three or four children
sadly disintegrated because I was headed to the asylum, drowning in the responsibility
of caring for just two. And I felt like
a failure. I was not enjoying
motherhood. What my mother referred to
as the best years of her life, were for me, turning out to be tiring,
stressful, miserable, a time I looked forward to seeing the end of.
And the thirty dollars I wasn’t willing to spend on three
hours of babysitting before, I was now spending on a co-pay to a psychiatrist,
pleading, “Help me!”
And she gave me permission to ask for help, to pay for help, to start enjoying
motherhood, to sit at their feet--to
sit at His feet.
My aunt started to come over once a week for a few hours so I
could run errands or write or run, I hired a cleaning lady to get to all the
stuff I never got to—the cleaning. I was
so busy with the picking up and organizing, so busy with the kitchen and the
laundry, that the bathrooms and the dusting, the floors and the blinds and all
the other nooks and crannies of the house were never touched. I let go of the guilty voice that said, “You
shouldn’t be spending your money on this.
Your mom never had a cleaning lady, plenty of other moms don’t. Why do you need one?” And I wrote a check and ran around the lake
with Charlie in warm weather that would not be around for long.
Just recently, I joined a Moms small group book study. We meet every Wednesday morning at a church
while generous caregivers watch our children.
And we just started a book that one chapter in has already lifted my
spirit, Having a Mary Heart in a Martha
World by Joanna Weaver. Only one
chapter in and I feel like she’s talking directly to me. And I can’t be the
only one.
Martha, the sister who is hard at work in the kitchen, busy
with the preparing, resentful of Mary who is just sitting in the living room
listening to Jesus—I am her. Mary, the
sister who sits at Jesus’s feet and listens intently to her teacher--I want to
be her. I want to sit and enjoy, listen
and absorb, smell the roses and the lavender baby shampoo in their hair. The
Martha nag within tells me there’s always work to be done. The dishes should always come before
snuggling up on the couch with a movie.
The laundry should always come before sitting down to do the puzzle. And so I’m missing out on the joy. And the lesson.
I’m so glad I found this group of women to sit and sip
coffee with on Wednesday mornings. It’s
wonderful to have a time when my hands aren’t busy, the list isn’t going, and I
can sit and feed my spirit. We are co-workers,
in this together: The spiritual part of
motherhood. We carry our burdens to this
conference table and we lay them down together at the Lord’s feet and we pray
for each other and support each other and listen and guide and laugh and cry
and take a break from motherhood to remember how much we love motherhood.
I want to leave the kitchen.
I want to share in the Better Part.
I’m so glad that Jesus invites me to do this, and I’m so grateful to
have people in my life that remind me of this.
Last night I asked David to help me dry the dishes. It was movie night and I wanted to see the
movie too. And you know what? He came in the kitchen, pulled a towel out of
the drawer and began wiping down the dripping pans. And then I sat on the couch, like a magnet,
as both boys climbed into my lap to settle in for the White Lion movie we picked
up from the library. And we all watched
the movie together, no laundry being folded, no bills being paid, no lists
being made, no emails being checked. And
when Finny started “pouncing” like a lion on his stuffed animals and pretending
to tear them to shreds with his teeth and Charlie, who misunderstood, starting “bouncing”
on his stuffed animals, jumping up and down, making roaring sounds, David and I
sat and watched and laughed and looked at each other…
—the two of us together,
--in the living room,
--giggling,
--enjoying the Better Part,
despite the fact that there was still and always will be
more work to be done.
