"Your body is the first thing any child of man ever wanted. Therefore dispose yourself to be loved, to be wanted, to be available. Be there for them with a vengeance. Be a gracious, bending woman. Incline your ear, your heart, your hands to them.... To be a Mother is to be the sacrament - the effective symbol - of place. Mothers do not make homes, they are our home." from Bed and Board, Robert Farrar Capon

Friday, September 6, 2013

Article Recommended: "Courage in the Ordinary"

"Now, I’m a thirty-something with two kids living a more or less ordinary life. And what I’m slowly realizing is that, for me, being in the house all day with a baby and a two-year-old is a lot more scary and a lot harder than being in a war-torn African village. What I need courage for is the ordinary, the daily every-dayness of life. Caring for a homeless kid is a lot more thrilling to me than listening well to the people in my home. Giving away clothes and seeking out edgy Christian communities requires less of me than being kind to my husband on an average Wednesday morning or calling my mother back when I don’t feel like it...."

"But I’ve come to the point where I’m not sure anymore just what God counts as radical. And I suspect that for me, getting up and doing the dishes when I’m short on sleep and patience is far more costly and necessitates more of a revolution in my heart than some of the more outwardly risky ways I’ve lived in the past. And so this is what I need now: the courage to face an ordinary day — an afternoon with a colicky baby where I’m probably going to snap at my two-year old and get annoyed with my noisy neighbor — without despair, the bravery it takes to believe that a small life is still a meaningful life, and the grace to know that even when I’ve done nothing that is powerful or bold or even interesting that the Lord notices me and is fond of me and that that is enough."


If you'd like to read this article (blog post) in its entirety you can find it here:

You can also listen to Tish Harrison Warren discussing her article with Michael Horton on The White Horse Inn *here*. 
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8 comments:

  1. Mary PSeptember 6, 2013 at 7:20 PM

    Thank you for posting this. I listened to the White Horse Inn audio file and was very encouraged.

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  2. AnonymousSeptember 7, 2013 at 2:57 PM

    Hey! I'm thirty something with two kids in the house, a baby (kind of) and a 2 yr old! :-)
    This reminded me of a quote I just came across.


    “The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one's 'own,' or 'real' life. The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one's real life -- the life God is sending one day by day.”

    ― C.S. Lewis, The Collected Works of C.S. Lewis

    By God's grace, of course.

    Grace K

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  3. UnknownSeptember 7, 2013 at 7:58 PM

    Very encouraging.

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  4. CathySeptember 7, 2013 at 8:37 PM

    Yes thank you , Leah. This was very confirming. It reminds me of something we have been blessed to hear for years: Changing a diaper is as "spiritual" as reading your bible.

    Grace: I really appreciate that C S Lewis--thank you

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  5. JaneSeptember 8, 2013 at 8:56 PM

    Martin Luther said it this way,

    "Our foolishness consists in laying too much stress upon the show of works and when these do not glitter as something extraordinary we regard them as of no value; and poor fools that we are, we do not see that God has attached and bound this precious treasure, namely his Word, to such common works as filial obedience, external, domestic, or civil affairs, so as to include them in his order and command, which he wishes us to accept, the same as though he himself had appeared from heaven. What would you do if Christ himself with all the angels were visibly to descend, and command you in your home to sweep your house and wash the pans and kettles? How happy you would feel, and would not know how to act for joy, not for the work’s sake, but that you knew that thereby you were serving him, who is greater than heaven and earth. . . ."

    From Luther’s sermon on the Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity, preached in Marburg in 1529

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  6. UnknownSeptember 9, 2013 at 8:56 AM

    Thank you Leah! (I know you were thinking of me. :)

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  7. Joan ScammanSeptember 9, 2013 at 3:41 PM

    Amen - it encouraged me in my vocation today

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  8. AubriSeptember 11, 2013 at 7:50 AM

    Yes, thank you for sharing this one Leah! I completely relate with the author's post. I grew up Evangelical and always believed that FOR ME (and for anyone who really loved Jesus) the only way to live as a "good Christian" would be to give myself to full time "ministry", being mission work. I couldn't have imagined all those years ago being a SAHM in the US, doing "nothing" but raising 6 kids...boring, "unspiritual".

    Of course all that changed as I learned the wonderful doctrine of Vocation and became a Lutheran...and then married a Lutheran Pastor! Ha! I'm always heartened when reminded of our Lutheran understanding that being a mother, changing diapers, feeding a family etc is truly "Golden and Noble work". So comforting.

    Also, I completely understand the author's other point about how much easier it is to be loving to complete strangers, for Jesus' sake, than it is to love and be kind to my closest neighbors, my beloved children and husband!

    "And I suspect that for me, getting up and doing the dishes when I’m short on sleep and patience is far more costly and necessitates more of a revolution in my heart than some of the more outwardly risky ways I’ve lived in the past."

    How true, how painfully true!

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