Bringing the Stable to the Mother

"Why do we have to go to mass tonight?" one kid complained. "Yeah, why didn't the Church move the feast to Sunday?" The teen sensed a mutiny and fanned the flames. I would have a full scale kid riot for a Holy Day of Obligation if I didn't act.

"We're going to the vigil mass because tomorrow is too full of things for us to make it. The 6:30 will be fine." I soothed. They'd already eaten. They were still dressed.

"I haven't done my homework." one said.
"Me neither." another volunteered.
"You have fourty-five minutes right now." I said and set the timer.

To minimize stress, I lay the coats in a pile, put my purse on top of it with my keys and lined up their shoes. I knew why the eleven year old didn't want to go. She'd had a fight with her two best friends, and the wounds were still fresh. I handed her my phone. "Call them. Say you're sorry. Don't demand anything. Just say what you are sorry for, and that you're also sorry there was a fight at all." She ran off to phone.

I wondered if we'd be spiritually wrecked before we even got to mass, as a shouting match broke out between two over the computer, and the girl with the phone came back, that problem cured, but a new one in tow. She'd been singing a Christmas carol and her brother didn't like it. When her brother didn't like something, he made sure everyone knew it.

I knew why the teen was mad. He wanted to eat. Mind you, he'd had two dinners already, but third dinner promised to be a better one, and so waiting seemed a major injustice. When he's mad, his favorite tactic is to set off as many other people with their own personal mads so that the whole world burns with madness.

I'd hit my limit. I admit, when I start a lecture, it gets a cadence all it's own and it keeps going. "We are going to celebrate and honor the Blessed Mother, and her state of perpetual sinlessness." I put on the first daughter's shoes. "We are going to celebrate a mass as a community and as a family." and handed her a coat. "We're going to sacrifice one hour of our lives to the woman who surrendered her son and didn't scream at the people who killed him." I knocked on the teen's door. "We're going as a family because this is what our faith teaches, it is important, and we're not going to become closer or kinder or better by arguing something none of us have the power to change, only to ignore or accept." I opened the door and they lined up. "Since I accept it and I'm the adult, knock it off and get in the car!"

We drove the three blocks down the road to the church. No one was in the parking lot. The announcement at the end of mass said 6:30, but the mass schedule on the door said 7:30. We went back home. "At least I know, all homework will be done." I said, "And we'll be back, hopefully in a more grateful and celebratory state in an hour."

P.S. They finished their homework and we made it.  The teen took his youngest brother to the back when he needed help quieting down, and when a daughter remarked during one of the songs, "Mary had it easy."  I said, "Nope, she had greater grace, but greater things were asked of her than of you and remember, she had to choose, all her life, to be obedient, even when she didn't feel like it."  Just to prove the point of how difficult obedience is, my son had a slight accident on my jeans.  I sat with him on my lap the rest of mass, draping my coat over the spot.  Mary understood.

I considered Mary's lfe and grace once again.  Mary had and has it hard; she had all of us to deal with, and we're all these messy squirly quarlesome children with different agendas. The mass ended and there was an opportunity to go and venerate a relic from the Blessed Mother.  A piece of her mantle was presented.   After I kissed the relic, I felt a deep sense of knowing, the obedience of grace, is the obedience born of love, that bears all things, hopes all things, and doesn't fail in patience or kindness, even when it seems like it would be so much easier to say, "Knock it off." because I said so.   Walking up, children in tow, smelly, still struggling with the trials of the day and the very real issue of my own wardrobe problem, I felt very much like the stable coming to her, in all its dirty dingey undignified way, coming to be somehow made better by love.  And it did.  Mary's kiss made everything better, even if nothing physically changed, how we treated each other, how we saw each other, did.  

Slow Down

It is the most common error I make as a mom; I can partially attribute it to being the first child, and to being a mom over and over again, but it ultimately comes from my own fault.   I forget to ask for help.   I forget in my quest to GET IT ALL DONE, that GETTING IT ALL DONE is not the goal of life.   It's also not the point of being a mother.

That "GETTING IT ALL DONE" is just an alternative version of "HAVING IT ALL" and both are the world's song.  The former is how a stay at home mom creates worth for being home, the later is how the at work mom, justifies not being home.  Both songs involve having the woman value herself according to what she can do, not who she is, and both require that the woman be something other than mother, something other than present.  Both songs require the woman be BUSY.

I fall into the siren trap of both tunes all the time.  I know because today, I heard my Catholic blogger friend, Sarah Reinhard talking on WMET 1160 about her new book, Word by Word, Slowing Down with the Hail Mary.  I was running late.  Mass started at ten.  One daughter was home sick.  Another was cantering at the mass.  I dragged my toddler and the sick one to the car.  The trip normally takes seventeen minutes (twenty-one if there's a train).   I had 18 minutes to make it.   The light at the mid county high way was abnormally clogged.  Two service trucks with flashing arrows eliminated the two lanes I would normally be in, so I moved over.  The light took forever.  The line didn't move.  I looked.

Two men from the work crew were shaking hands and hugging the passenger and driver of a truck and talking through the green light.  Sarah was talking about the need to slow down and how we have this tendency to speed through things, even prayer.   I sat bemused at the men stopping traffic and all of time, to hug.   But then I had to switch lanes again and now, I was stuck for another round of lights and in the wrong lane.   My good humor evaporated in an instant.

I had ten minutes to make it to mass, and I'd been stuck at this stupid light for over seven minutes.   To calm myself down, I refocused on Sarah's voice.  She spoke of the process, of asking forty writers to each take a word from the Hail Mary, and use it as the source for a meditation on the whole of the prayer, and I thought, the idea of asking others for help, was something I needed to learn.  In writing, asking others to contribute was a means to flesh out the deeper meaning of the prayer.  So also, if I could learn to ask for help, I could help flesh out the deeper meaning of motherhood, of living this life, and not "HAVING or GETTING IT ALL" but having all be part of the process of living.

Sarah talked about "Slowing down" in the prayer, and in life.   I had eight minutes and another red light.

Slow down...slow down.  How would it be possible to slow down?  I sat at the red light, trapped behind a bus, convicted.  I was fighting the best advice I'd ever get.   Why?  Because I'd have to surrender something.  I'd have to abandon getting it all done and having it all, if I wanted something better.  But  I'd been pushing this damn boulder of life, whether as a parent, or as a writer, and thinking, what would happen if I slowed down?  Less progress that's what!   I didn't want to slow down.  Five minutes left.   I made the turn onto the side street to try to navigate back to the church.  The bus stopped and pedestrians got out.   "I JUST WANT TO GET TO MASS ON TIME!" I growled in frustration.   The bus pulled away.

"Slow down."  I'd heard Sarah say.  I felt convicted.  The men shaking hands had slowed down. If they'd been efficient, there would have been no hi, no hugs, no smiles, no laughs.  That would have been a darker moment of life, just work, no solace, no joy, no friends.    I slowed down.  Because I slowed down, I saw on the side of the road, a woman dressed in black.  She wasn't paying attention to the drivers.  She was stalking two deer in the underbrush, trying to snatch a picture.  I slowed down more so as to not spook the deer.   She too, was stopping time, stalking beauty instead of caution or efficiency.  There are countless pictures of deer on the internet, but this one, would be hers.   I look at the clock.  It is ten o'clock. At best, we will be five minutes late but I've finally been pulled into the proper spirit to even show up at mass.

We pulled into the parking lot, and there were the children, lining up to go to the Church.  We hadn't missed it.  It hasn't started.  Mercy for me and a message, over and over again.  Slow down.   That is the purpose of Advent, the purpose of prayer, the purpose of living.  Not to have done everything or get everything or have everything, but to be present.  I held my daughters and sang, "Ave, Ave, Ave Maria..." but my heart was shouting, "Thank you, thank you, thank you Blessed Mother."