Mothering the Martha vs. Mary way

We just finished spending a gloriously uneventful weekend at home. For the first time in months, we had the entirety of Saturday and Sunday to ourselves without being a slave to some sort of schedule.

We were anxious to get caught up on tasks around the house that have been left unattended to for weeks: the pull-down stairs for the attic had been dangling perilously in the garage after having come loose back in June, the freezer had frosted over (thanks to the resident 2yr old leaving it cracked open after retrieving her contraband popsicle) and needed defrosting, the master bathroom was a nightmare, the spare bedroom needed a serious overhaul to ready it for DH's rapidly approaching need for work-at-home workspace, the garden needed weeding and we have a project going on that is requiring a ridiculous amount of paperwork.

Needless to say, we had our weekend's worth of work cut out for us. And we were committed to sucking the marrow out of the day. We were going to conquer our task lists.

But to do so, there would be a heavy price to pay.

You see, our children had been looking forward to the weekend too. They had their own task lists which included spending time with their dad who has been working crazy hours. They wanted to play board games. They wanted to bake cookies. They didn't see the cluttered counters or double sink full of dirty dishes or floors that needed to be swept or bathrooms that needed serious attention.

They just saw and wanted us. Their mom and dad. To show them a little time and attention.

As frustrated as I was to not be able to get those things done as fast I wanted, I had to stop. The words of the gospel reading from the previous Sunday were ringing in my ears:

Jesus entered a village where a woman whose name was Martha welcomed him.
She had a sister named Mary who sat beside the Lord at this feet listening to him speak.
Martha, burdened with much serving, came to him and said,
"Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me by myself to do the serving?
Tell her to help me." The Lord said to her in reply,
"Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things.
There is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part
and it will not be taken from her." (Luke 10:38-42)

The irony was not lost on me. These are the very same children I prayed for so desperately but very often now need out of my way so I can achieve my own agenda. This was not the first time that I was tempted to shoo my children away in favor of doing something that I felt was more important at the moment. Of course some of my jobs as a wife and mother are time sensitive like making timely meals, changing a diaper or getting everyone up and dressed and out the door to leave. But how many times have I found an excuse not to play a board game or read them a book or sit down and play monster trucks or just be silly?

What? Because I wasn't finished drinking my morning coffee? Because I needed "just a few more minutes" at the computer? (To check my FB feed?) Because I was folding laundry and didn't want to go all the way downstairs to see the Lego creation they wanted to show me? I cringe to think of the times we've defaulted to the use of a digital screen when we didn't "have the time" to engage with them. To give them IRL FaceTime. Or failing to involve them in the tasks I was doing because "I can do it faster on my own".

The gospel lesson of Mary and Martha is for mothers too.

"Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things. There is need of only one thing. "

There will always be excuses, but my children will not always need me (or want me) like they do now. There will always be things needing to be done around the home but how often do we give precedence to these ever pressing tasks over our children's need for our time and attention? Their love tank that needs filling is infinitely more important than my dishwasher that needs emptying.

I will have much to answer for one day.

I was pondering this when I noticed that today's feast day was none other than that of...St. Martha.

This is no coincidence.

Poor Martha. She gets a bad rep for being a neat freak and an overly fastidious housekeeper. But really, she must have been a quick learner and a faithful believer at that because the next time we encounter her in the gospel is when her brother Lazarus has died and she doesn't bat an eye before saying,

"Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. Yet even now I know that whatever you ask of God, he will give you." (John 11:21-22)

Martha, Martha. I've long identified with you more than your counterpart Mary. I've always got something going on, some task that's pressing, something that always is vying for my time and attention. I'm rarely idle. It's just how I'm wired. I have to work hard at carving time out of my day to stop, breathe, look around and take in my surroundings. I have to remind myself to make sure I sit down, pull the toddler on my lap and read her a book. Or to call the boys to the table for a game of Qwirkle. I have to remember that I'm creating my own legacy here.

Good St. Martha. She's a woman for our times, especially for "busy moms" who need a little extra reminder to put down the kitchen towel and get down on the floor and play with those Lego, to read that book for the 10,000th time, to just hold those warm, squirmy, ticklish bodies and kiss those jelly-stained faces. It's hard to think of making mud pies together as being truly worthwhile. But therein lies the real investment of parenting. It's a lasting investment too - and I for one want my children to still want me in their lives more than just Thanksgiving and Christmas when they are adults. But it's also an eternal investment because our kids encounter love and quality time and sacrifice through their parents first. I want my kids to be saints, willing to give when it's not convenient. They won't learn it unless I show them the way.

And let's face it...that task list that will never be finished anyhow.