The Weaving of a Story

"Why do I have to make my bed every morning if I'm just going to sleep in it again tonight?"

I'm sure every mother has been asked that question at one time or another, and perhaps even felt a fluctuating doubt of her own as she answered.  The child certainly must be told some sort of solid answer to this question, but even more importantly, the mother must have a solid answer for herself.  Because without it, the subtle "what a waste," and "who really cares about any of this?" and "what's the use?" implied in that question have the potential to cause major upheaval in the domestic value system of her heart and in her home.  I realized this when my son asked me that question a while back. (His motives were anything but philosophical. Just laziness at its best. ;)  But I pondered it for a many days afterward.  The quick-shot answer I gave him on that rushed morning before school wasn't satisfactory.  I would like him to have a better one.

I believe Martin Luther's explanation of the fourth petition of The Lord's Prayer provides a much better answer than the one I gave that morning.  It's from "Give us this day our daily bread."

   
God gives daily bread, even without our prayer, also to all the wicked; 

but we pray in this petition that He would lead us to know it, 

                                           and to receive our daily bread with thanksgiving.

Luther goes on to say that "daily bread" includes everything that belongs to the supports and wants of the body. Then a bed is an example of something in that category. If we are to receive our daily bread with thanksgiving, acknowledging it as a gift from God, then caring for it is part of recognition of this.  After all, we pray each petition, not for God's sake, but that we would come to know it.  I think this is a great reason my children should make their beds each morning. They learn that no thing in their life is just there to be used, and simply disposed of at their convenience, but should be recognized as an undeserved gift and benefit, and therefore tended and cared for as such, for their own sake, and their neighbor's as well (especially if they share a room :).  I believe this is part of how they come to know it.


As for a mother, the answer seems to be much bigger, since it seems most of her daily work consists of things that will only get messed up again tomorrow.  Or five minutes from now.

So why?  And who really does care?  And what is the use?   I believe it's more than the thing in itself.

Something from a C. S. Lewis article I had read long long ago found its way back to the forefront of my thoughts lately on this subject.  After much searching I found it again in his article, On Stories, and I feel that it has a great correlation to the settling of this question from a mother's perspective: 

"It must be admitted that the art of Story as I see it is a very difficult one.  To be stories at all they must be series of events; but it must be understood that this series - the plot, as we call it - is only really a net whereby to catch something else.  The real theme may be, and perhaps usually is, something that has no sequence in it, something other than a process and something much more like a state or quality....

Shall I be thought whimsical if I suggest that this internal tension in the heart of every story between the theme and the plot constitutes its chief resemblance to life?....   In life and art both, as it seems to me, we are always trying to catch on our net of successive moments something that is not successive."

It's not just about making a bed for the thousandth time.  It's not just about making a dinner for the thousandth night.  It's not just about washing, drying, and folding the thousandth shirt that is only going to be soiled and wrinkled again.  It's about telling a Story.  It's about the daily string of these seemingly trivial successive events that becomes one more thread weaving a net, a home, a worldview, but more importantly, faith, trust and contentment in one's God given vocation that catches up and forms the people who are in this home.

When a husband puts on his carefully ironed shirt in the morning and comes home to the smell of a good meal at night, or when a boy walks into his room after school and faintly senses that something's different, not necessarily noticing that all the little mounds of dirty socks have magically disappeared, or that the dresser has been dusted, or that the closet has been organized, or that his bedspread has been tucked in neatly, but feeling a sense of welcoming, like a sweet smell suddenly filling his room and his being, that net has caught him for a second. It has told him a story.  Mom's been here.  Mom cares.  It is good when someone cares.

It happens in a thousand little ways, all stranding together, rendering value to life, in minutes.  By living in a house where things are cared for, because people are cared for, because this God-given realm of responsibility is cared for, fulfilled in daily trust and surrender to God's perfect will, a daughter learns that there's nothing out of the ordinary or wasteful in making beds every day, or ironing clothes over and over, or cutting up all those vegetables for just one meal, or taking the time to place everything on the platter nicely to be pleasing to the eye of the partakers.  It's more than a series of events.  It's a Story being lived out, being passed on to the next generation.  It's a story that our lives are to be poured out in service to our neighbor, just as Jesus poured the water over his disciples' feet and washed them.  He being Lord of all, emptied himself, took the form of a servant, and we are to do likewise.  When that net has caught you, your whole perspective on life changes.

"And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, 

giving thanks to God the Father through Him."

Colossians 3:17