Unholy Work

When my oldest was a baby, I clung to the routines that worked with white knuckles. He was, to be kind, not what you would call “an easy baby.” As he approached toddlerhood, we would stringently dance the same steps to his post-nap routine, the same sequence every day, simply because it had worked once. And mothers of young children are nothing but a little superstitious.

When I would hear him stir in his crib, I would quickly pour ice-cold milk into a sippy cup, fill a small bowl with goldfish crackers, and cue up a Baby Einstein video. I would silently enter his room and scoop him up while avoiding any eye contact, which had historically made him screech like a pterodactyl upon waking. I would gently set him on the couch in front of Baby Einstein, surround him within a nest of his favorite blankies and stuffies, hand him his milk and crackers, and then slowly back away into the kitchen like I had just defused a bomb. When I dared to peek around the corner at my firstborn, he could often be found sipping milk while kneading his hair with his fingers, happily absorbed in the make believe world of Baby Einstein. After about fifteen minutes of this, I would hear his tiny-voiced calls of Mama from the kitchen, inviting me into his nest, where we’d eat goldfish together while he slowly woke up to the world. 

Whatever dreams I’d had of post-nap snuggles with my first baby were quickly dashed, and I chalked his particular nap-induced grouchiness up to a shrug-toned parody of Hannah’s prayer in I Samuel 1:27: “I prayed for THIS child, and the Lord has granted me what I asked of him” (emphasis and implied eye roll added).  

Recently, I reread I Kings 19. In it, beleaguered prophet Elijah is so discouraged and defeated from not being listened to that he actually wished he was dead, a feeling that I believe most mothers can relate to around 4:57 p.m. each day, after hours of repeated instructions which have been skillfully ignored by their children. But God does not meet Elijah  in his despair with a cattle prod and a stern tone. Nor does God come with a Bible bandaid, an exhortation, or, really, even any words at all. 

Instead, God comes and cares for Elijah’s body.

He encourages Elijah to take TWO naps. Upon waking, God reveals the fresh water and warm bread he’d brought to Elijah’s hiding place for him to eat.

We see here how God cares for our spirits THROUGH our bodies, the importance of honoring our bodies’ many needs, the holy work of caring for our feeble bodies. 

So many of us are wrangling nap times and wiping butts and clipping toenails and cutting grapes and doing our darnedest to remember which of the kids like salsa on their tacos and which ones don’t. We are buckling car seats and washing endless laundry and cautiously sniffing our sons in an attempt to guess when they’ve last showered. We are making doctor’s appointments and applying prescription creams and detangling knotted hair and getting up in the night to soothe the ones that can’t stop coughing in bed. We are doing God’s holy work of caring for the bodies of our kids, echoing God’s arguably maternal love in each of these (un)holy moments of our day. 

God has been caring for our bodies from the beginning, waking Adam up with an invitation to eat (Genesis 2: 16), then mysteriously and miraculously feeding his people not only manna but even quail in the desert (Exodus 16). God intimately knows our sorrow and how it festers in our body (Psalm 38) and is deeply in touch with the pain of our psychology and physiology (Genesis 21:15-18). Jesus spent his time on earth healing myriad physical maladies, leprosy and internal bleeding alike, asking so many that he met: What do you want from me?  

It is abundantly evident that God cares greatly for our bodies, and we as mothers uniquely exercise this Divine love in our everyday.

It is essential that we remember that this work matters. It is vital that we recognize how we bear God’s image in the innumerable ways that we care for the bodies of our kids, to acknowledge how this work, though repetitive and often admittedly icky, is just one more conduit for our kids to know that they are loved deeply, by us and by their Maker. 

Recently, in Ecclesiastes, I came across the exhortation to enjoy the gifts of God that are good food and drink and to enjoy our work. I laughed because if I am known for anything, it is probably that I struggle not to audibly moan when taking a bite of good food and that most of my free time is spent dreaming up how I can replicate that one meal at that one restaurant from last month. I freaking love food. 

What I don’t love is cleaning up vomit. I do not love poop-stained underwear or bed sheets that reek of urine. I do not love the song and dance that is having weeks of sick kids, the shuffle of Tylenol and cough syrup and elderberry that dominates our winter lives and kitchen countertops for weeks at a time. I do not love the herculean effort to ensure that my children have clothes that fit for the current season, and I could go happily and easily go the rest of my life without being told that the dinner I’ve just labored over is “gross.” 

To take joy in this work is not to relish in cleaning vomit off the carpet. By all means, text your friends fourteen gifs of people gagging as you seek the particular solidarity that is not having kids who yet know how to make it to the bathroom before puking. But the exhortation to take joy is in this: 

That in each act of care for our kids bodies, we are echoing the love of Jesus. We are practicing Divine Labor even in the Unholy Icky. We are accessing God’s own love for our kids, the same love he has for our bodies. In that, let us enjoy our work.