Motherhood has been for me, if nothing else, a school in frequently painful self denial. We’re not talking martyrdom here, just the run of the mill sacrifices a decent human being makes for those they love and, eventually, with practice, for those they don’t even particularly like.
But I’m a crappy self-giver.
At least when it’s not my idea to begin with, I am. I can be super unselfish when I feel like it, but those feelings are so clutch. If I’m feeling generous and well-rested and prepared to give, I can leave it all on the field. But factor in midnight wake ups and repeatedly-delayed departures to Costco and getting cut off in traffic and urinary-based accidents all over the carpet? Not so much.
Enter motherhood. Enter the vocation of continual self-giving that is so utterly ridiculous in the eyes of the world and in my own eyes that only a non-human intelligence could have dreamed it up. Because oh my gosh kids, they just.need.so.much.
And often they follow you to the bathroom.
What I’m getting at here is that their needs are constantly one-upping mine and Dave’s. And your kids are doing the same thing to you, aren’t they? And if you’re a priest, your parishioners are doing it, calling you at midnight and asking for all kinds of ridiculous things. And if you’re a nurse, it’s your patients. And if you’re the guy at the coffee shop, it’s your pushy entitled customers.
We’ve all got ample opportunity in a day to be profoundly loving in small, mundane, painfully inefficient ways. Case in point? I’ve been sitting here for 30 minutes and I’ve written 4 paragraphs, having been interrupted 37 times by varying levels of ridiculous intrusions on my plans, my schedule.
I would be so much more selfish without these children. Outside of this vocation. And I say this with the full knowledge that I’m still hella selfish.
I was thinking about that this morning while I was picking up legos and cleaning up breakfast dishes and wishing I could execute on some of the lofty, productive plans I have for my day, for the month, and realizing all the same that there was no way, in this tumultuous season of life with a (very, very accommodating) newborn and 3 preschoolers, that I was going to be able to do most of it. And I was mad.
These kids so often present themselves as little intrusions, interruptions and alterations to my plans, to my rhythym of life. I’ve only just begun to realize in a heart way what I know to be true in a head way, that oft-Pinned maxim that my children are not an interruption to the most important work, they are the most important work.
But God help me, I’m still very much a product of this culture that has trained me to believe otherwise. Trained me well.
Combine our collective tendency toward calculating individualism and self-fulfillment with good old fashioned concupiscence and you have a perfect recipe for reluctant parenthood, particularly the maternal variety.
And so even for those women who have chosen, so it would appear, child-rearing over loftier professional aspirations, it can still be so tempting – it is so tempting – to go about the business of being mom with a grumbling, frustrated heart whose desires are constantly being thwarted.
I want to write a book. I want to plan that event. I want to get those bathrooms clean. I want to start and grow a life-changing ministry that will bring people to Christ and change the world. I want to prep and execute a perfectly paleo meal plan for the week, stripping away the obscene amounts of baby weight still hanging around like an unwelcome houseguest.
But I have to change another diaper.
I have to break up another toddler death match over broken Lego airplanes and a certain episode of Paw Patrol that was cut short by sibling aggression. I have to cook dinner that nobody is going to eat without complaining (and by cook I mean defrost something and put it on top of rice, because my freezer is still stocked with generosity that looks like casseroles). I have to nurse this fat baby and read this story instead of taking a shower or getting to the gym, at least for today.
(And sometimes it’s not just them. Lots of the time, in fact, it’s my novice failure to make good use of natural pockets of time when I could be putting on mascara or praying a rosary or doing push ups and instead I’m watching Netflix or clicking mindlessly through links about cats who lip-synch Taylor Swift songs. So don’t canonize me yet.)
I guess my takeaway is this: I’m not going to become holy on my own. And He knows it. If I didn’t have all these little needs who share my last name pulling at my selfish heart all day long, I’m sure there would be other opportunities for growth in virtue. Like a mouth-breathing nun who can’t say the responses in unison with the rest of the community. Or a superior who misunderstands my natural personality for pride and thinks poorly of me. Or, you know, tuberculosis.
I love St. Therese for a million reasons, but not least of all for her largeness of heart and grandiosity of vision which God took and reshaped and refashioned and handed it back to her in such a ridiculous package that you almost want to laugh, because otherwise you might cry.
I want to be a missionary and take the Gospel to the ends of the earth and join the ranks of the likes of St. Ignatius of Loyola.
Oh, okay, here’s a vocation to a cloistered order of nuns who will mostly misunderstand and underestimate you. You’ll never travel outside its walls again, and you’ll die young after spending most of your time sweeping floors and washing altar cloths.
Oh, cool Lord. Sounds really great.
Except it was. Because she participated in His plans and set her own aside, she’s now she’s the patroness of missionaries. One of only four female Doctors of the Church. And one of the most beloved and well-known saints of all time.
Because Therese said yes a million times to a million little things, God gave her the world. But on His terms.
And it worked out pretty well for her.
St. Therese, you said you’d spend your heaven doing good on earth. Do some good on my behalf. Help my small heart to accommodate itself to the immensity of love present in the little things He is asking of me today.
“Without love, deeds, even the most brilliant, count as nothing.”
Saint Thérèse of Lisieux
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