As is the way of children, my littles do not enjoy doing their daily chores—and as is the way of parents, I continue to give them their little tasks to complete. It sometimes feels like a chore myself, reminding them again each morning to finish their work without complaining to me or arguing with each other. But besides teaching them to be tidy or keep a clean kitchen, I’m trying to teach them faithfulness. I want them to learn how to accept the mundane, daily tasks and transform them with faithfulness.
I have learned to enjoy household chores more than my children, but my grasp on this joy is tenuous. There are times when I’m certain picking up one more pair of socks or forgotten Nerf dart will push me over the edge of insanity. There are days when I walk into the kitchen to make dinner only to discover a sink full of dirty dishes, the floor scattered with haphazard toys, and an empty fridge. Sometimes I lean against the counter, shoulders sagging, and brace myself just to do it all again.
I have dealt with chronic fatigue for several years, but I don’t think it takes chronic illness to understand that bone-tired heaviness. My knuckles may be cracked and dried from washing dishes, and here I am again, regardless. I have planned and executed a dozen family dinners in as many days, and before me is another. I have swept the floor and wiped the table down and lit a candle to flicker through the evening, only to come to the beginning of another evening with the same floor and table scattered with crumbs again.
I know that keeping my home tidy is an act of hospitality to my children, my husband, even to myself. I learned this hospitality through the example and training of my mother, and on days when I can’t summon the humility to clean the kitchen with joy, I settle for cleaning out of obedience.
But I have come to learn, by small talismans of generosity scattered around my home, that obedience can become something more.
On the shelf by my armchair is a copy of Bonhoeffer’s Life Together. As important as the book itself is the bookmark keeping pace with me through the pages. It is a small card in a shimmery brown envelope that reads simply “You are so loved.” There is a strange sweetness in using the physical tokens of community to keep place as I read Bonhoeffer’s exhortations for community. What I learn from him in nonfiction, I absorb through this tiny card that is love made manifest.
I know the kitchen table where that card was written. I know the hands that wrote it. There was a time, over a year ago now, when the thought of this particular friend kept interrupting me, week after week, so to create a physical time and space to pray for her, I began to knit. I chose a pair of mittens with a color-work pattern on the back, white against green. While I knit, I prayed: I prayed specifically for the work of her hands, though I didn’t know exactly why. I prayed and knit, and unbeknownst to me, she was writing Christmas cards.
I finished the mittens a few Christmases ago, but not until a year later did I finally see the effort and generosity of hers that I had unwittingly prayed over those several weeks. I joined her for a cup of tea one evening; she handed me a mug hot enough to scald my fingers and carefully cleared away stacks of Christmas cards, piles of boxes, and a stash of earthy-brown tissue paper so that I could lean my elbows on the kitchen table. It was Advent, and she was packing Christmas boxes.
She sat next to me, like a queenly scribe. Before her was a long list of names which she squinted at in between writing cards. Each gift was wrapped lavishly in the brown tissue paper with a small shimmery card, just like the one in my copy of Bonhoeffer, snugged inside. Before she closed the lid of a box, she laid on the very top a white envelope, the recipient’s name in ornate cursive. The card, I knew, would not have any generic holiday greetings but encouragement and prayer unique to every single person.
It was a labor of love, yes, but also of obedience.
Those Christmas boxes, the one I opened sitting at the table with her and the ones that would be opened on different kitchen tables in other homes, other states, even other countries—those boxes were made of obedience. My little bookmark card began its journey when she picked it out from a storefront and sat down at the kitchen table to write those four words—you are so loved. In obedience it was nestled into the folds of tissue paper and in obedience the box was set aside, my name written on top with the flourish of her handwriting. But when I opened the box, what she had begun in obedience, I felt in generosity.
Life Together has become a morning read; I bring it to the table with me when I eat breakfast. I set the tiny card beside my plate, and in that small patch of shimmering brown paper, I see all the hours of writing, praying, and packing. I see the steady faithfulness of spending weekends and evenings carefully writing the words each friend and coworker may need to hear. I see sleepless nights and aching hands and hundreds of mugs of steaming tea on that solitary kitchen table, faithfully doing the work of community.
One Sunday morning, when my daughter tried to wake everyone up early, my son shushed her and (which effectively woke me up even faster) said they should prepare “a surprise.”
When I came downstairs an hour later, he’d been true to his word. The dishwasher was unloaded completely, with nary a squabble. His bed was fixed, and he was dressed for church, pajamas put away in his drawer. As a crowning glory, my boy who spent years refusing to color, paint, or participate in any sort of art had drawn me a flower in bright oil pastels.
What he offered as obedience, I saw as generosity.
The memory I have of that tidy kitchen and the carefully drawn tulip and the small bookmark keeping company with Bonhoeffer are like the fruits of transfiguration. The steps they took in obedience, I received as generosity. Somewhere between the giving and the receiving, the appearance is changed. It was a moment of transfiguration. An eternal glory was revealed, growing out of submission to childish chores, to cramped hands writing card after card on the over-full kitchen table.
My friend’s obedience is like the five loaves and two fish offered to a crowd. Somewhere, a mother had baked bread and somewhere, a father had gone fishing, and through their faithful, mundane actions a crowd of many thousands was generously fed and fully satisfied. Their obedience becomes an act of generosity. When the bread and fish are put in Jesus’s hands, their truer nature shines through.
I am in my kitchen again. It is early afternoon. I clear the table, wash the dishes. Prepare in advance the beginnings of a dinner we’ll share with friends this weekend. An hour later I’m back, putting away the dried dishes, wiping the counters, sweeping up mud my daughter tracked in through the back door.
There are many other things that need doing. A knitted gift lies, half finished, by my armchair. The light is fading, and I haven’t taken my babes for a walk yet. Several unanswered emails languish in my inbox.
But in this moment, all I have is my faithfulness. I sweep up the mud by the back door and wipe up the crumbs on the counter, and I hold these small, unseen actions up to the hands of the Holy. Through His touch, whether I see it or not, whether I hear a word of thanks or praise, it can become what it was meant to be: a gift.
The featured image, “Cup of Kindness and Generosity,” is courtesy of Lancia E. Smith and is used with her glad permission for Cultivating.
Gianna Soderstrom is a contributing writer to Cultivating Oaks Press and the Anselm Society, and she serves as Assistant Director of the Anselm Society Arts Guild. Adventure-hearted, but also a connoisseur of cozy, book-ish evenings, she is delighted by coffee and cocoa but shockingly, not tea. She is equally fascinated and challenged by the myriad ways that small and steady faithfulness transform a strange place into a home. She is a writer, dreamer, wife to Grant, mama to E1 and E2, and more than the sum of her parts, just like you. Gianna writes here and everywhere else to mine hope out of our ordinary moments.
Lovely!