Mother’s Day (and Bilbo Baggins)

We spent some time at my parents’ house yesterday, celebrating Mother’s Day and retrieving two kids, a dog, a rabbit, and two hamsters. My husband and I had gone to our denomination’s District Assembly a few hours from here, and my folks kept the menagerie while we were away. The only unfortunate discovery is that my mother is allergic to rabbits. Badly. Good thing my sister is a nurse who had a nebulizer and some Albuterol. Other than that, a good time was had by all.

And how could it not be? My folks still live in the home I grew up in, and it is a dream location for a child, full of nooks and crannies and beauty. That picture above is of the woods, but there is also a creek…

And a playhouse — a chicken coop in ancient times, and now a holder of tomato stakes during the winter months. But in my day, it held kids, and it still has plenty of imaginative appeal.

(I’m playing with my new camera’s “miniature effect,” so that’s why some of these pics are blurred around the edges.)

It distresses me this morning that it’s Mother’s Day, and I feel a familiar grimness seeping in. I really enjoyed having a couple of days with just my husband; we had a really good time together. I woke up yesterday with joy, looking forward to the day. But today all the living creatures are back in their places, needing to be cared for, and I hear the small hissing sound of joy leaking away.

How do I hang on to the sense of spontaneity and joy in the midst of the mundane? Others have large and serious trials to face, but mine is simply the steady pressure of the mundane. How do I offer myself gladly to this little circle of neediness without feeling like Bilbo Baggins — “all thin, sort of stretched, if you know what I mean: like butter that has been scraped over too much bread”?

It’s Mother’s Day, and I am blessed and grateful to be a mother. I love my kids and think they are fantastic. I have the privilege of being at home with them. I even have the privilege of educating them. There was a time when I wasn’t sure I would ever marry, and now my life is rich beyond anything I could have imagined then. I wish I didn’t worry so much about how far beyond my competence it all is. I’m pretty sure that’s where the joy starts leaking out.

Oswald Chambers says this in today’s reading, and it inspires me that the “scraped thin” seasons are all part of the Master plan:

A saint’s life is in the hands of God like a bow and arrow in the hands of the archer. God is aiming at something the saint cannot see, and He stretches and strains, and every now and then the saint says — “I cannot stand any more.” God does not heed, He goes on stretching till His purpose is in sight, then He lets fly. Trust yourself in God’s hands…

The real meaning of eternal life is a life that can face anything it has to face without wavering. If we take this view, life becomes one great romance, a glorious opportunity for seeing marvelous things all the time.