I miss beating the cones at Carver Elementary school. Before in-person classes ended, our weekday routine delivered us to school just before they closed the car rider drop-off. The cone keeper was merciful. I loved her. But occasionally we would still arrive late, just beyond the limits of her graciousness, to find a row of […]
I miss beating the cones at Carver Elementary school.
Before in-person classes ended, our weekday routine delivered us to school just before they closed the car rider drop-off. The cone keeper was merciful. I loved her. But occasionally we would still arrive late, just beyond the limits of her graciousness, to find a row of orange cones blocking the way. I became convinced that Emmy was moving slowly on purpose. Eventually she confessed that she wanted to miss drop-off so she could walk down the Kindergarten hall and see her friends. Beating the cones was ordinary but stressful, and I might have appreciated its graces more than I did at the time.
Social distancing replaced that order with another—a disorderly order of the struggle to muster the will or wherewithal for schoolwork, the clutter that came with always being at home, the chaos of unscheduled time, the sadness of missing friends and celebrations, the fear of sickness and death. But I found the new stresses illuminating the old ones. They were different in form but, in fact, not really new at all. Exhaustion and mess and disruption and sorrow are always at hand. There is always struggle in parenting—whether the struggle to beat the cones or the struggle to make the Zoom.
Struggle, but also meaning and goodness. As I came to appreciate the daily graces of the cones, it seemed to me that there was grace in this disorderly time too, though I may not have eyes to see it, and not only in good things (time together, meals at home, reconnection with distant friends and family) but in the hard things too. Just keeping going, caring for children, doing our best were acts of faithfulness, patience (though it didn’t always feel like it), and endurance–holy virtues all.
In In the Midst of Chaos: Caring for Children as Spiritual Practice, Bonnie Miller-McLemore writes of the discipline of seeing theological significance in the difficult but ordinary tasks of parenting. She cites Martin Luther, who found God’s presence in the everyday family life. One might ask, Luther said, why one would desire life with a spouse and children: “Alas, must I rock the baby, wash its diapers, make its bed, smell its stench, stay up night with it, take care of it when it cries, heal its rashes and sores, and on top of that care for my wife, provide for her, labor at my trade, take care of this and take care of that, do this and do that, endure this and endure that…?” That’s what natural reason, according to Luther, might say. But he goes on: “What then does Christian faith say to this? It opens its eyes, looks upon all these insignificant, distasteful, and despised duties in the spirt, and is aware that they are all adorned with divine approval as is the costliest gold and jewels…. I confess to thee that I am no worthy to rock the little babe or wash its diapers, or be entrusted with the care of the child and its mother…. O how gladly I will do so, though the duties should be even more insignificant and despised. Neither frost nor heat, neither drudgery nor labor, will distress or dissuade me, for I am certain that it is thus pleasing in [God’s] sight.”
If you’re out the in midst of new daily struggles, know that they are holy. You are being faithful. God sees and honors your everyday work, as different as these days are, and will meet you in the midst of it.