Mind-Bending Quote of the Day: Anne Lindbergh

The more I read about Anne Morrow Lindbergh and the things she wrote the more I want to be her close friend!

[It] is a strange paradox. Woman instinctively wants to give, yet resents giving herself in small pieces...What we fear is not so much that our energy may be leaking away through small outlets as that it may be "going down the drain." . . . Except for the child, woman's creation is so often invisible, especially today. We are working at an arrangement in form, of the myriad disparate details of housework, family routine, and social life. It is a kind of intricate game of cat's-cradle we manipulate on our fingers, with invisible threads. How can one point to this constant tangle of household chores, errands, and fragments of human relations as a creation? Is is hard even to think of it as purposeful activity, so much of it is automatic. Woman herself begins to feel like a telephone exchange or a laundromat.

I am reading this quote and blogging while I am surrounded by dirty dishes, messy rooms, 5 loads of laundry needing to be sorted, washed, dried, folded and put up. I have yet to play with the kids and haven't spent any time pointing them to the Lord today. I have little energy for home life.

I do have energy for staff life, and friend life and for my bible study, and my home group. I feel excited about the partnership I'm experiencing with my pastor as we work on resources for Home Groups to use and feel creative as I am building the Regional website for InterVarsity in the Blue Ridge. I love writing talks and praying through the sessions of our winter conference, CornerStone.

All of these things are good, but they are not all I'm called to. I'm called to my Home. I'm called to my kids and to my dishes and to my dirty clothes. And the kicker is this--that as I press into this calling, into my call to make a home for my family and pursue excellence in that calling, I can know God. And know Him as fully as I can when I'm prepping a talk, or leading a Bible Study.

I read this quote from a book, "Finding God at Home: Family Life as Spiritual Discipline". My friend Becky suggested it when I was ranting to her about my frustration over having to serve my family through chores and neatness. And the quote helped me verbalize why home stuff feels so draining, so meaningless. But I have hope that it doesn't have to be. I have hope that God can break through the frustration and despair and give me closeness to Him, give me joy at being made more like His son, give me perspective and freedom from the curse of a life centered in my self.

The author of the book puts it like this,

This spirituality [of the home] offers something subtle. . . but awesome--a recognition of the patterns of eternity. This is probably the oldest of humanity's perceptions of the divine. . . In a community, especially the community of the family, it is the human seasons that come to be known so well, and it is through them that it is possible to discover the eternal. Living human life in the context of the family produces an understanding that discovers in every change the element that never changes. (24)

So I guess I'll stop blogging and get to cleaning my room--maybe the breakthrough will be today.