Lion and Bear have been busy lately. Motherhood has challenged me beyond any other vocation to embrace the moment and let go...of everything. I let them play at the sink together for the first time. Our wood stove was burning hot, so I knew that anything that got drenched could simply dry by the fire. I actually enjoyed this activity. Lion found pleasure in spraying water in
Bear's his own face, and Bear washed the same few bottle lids endlessly, all the while drinking so much water that I no longer knew what was running down his front and what was leaking out his diaper.
Simple games, like filling muffin tins with colored pegs, occupy my Bear while I can get the last of dinner fixed before hubbie comes in the door and provides the best distraction ever for the little animals. We don't resist PBS programs. I thank God for them every day. But they only work for Lion. My sixteen month-old is insistent on pushing chairs to the counter and climbing, climbing, climbing every day. At times I can only move them to another room, close the door, and hug him while he wails as though deeply wounded.
My job is to nurture, teach, and provide a playground of exploring all life has to offer. It's only difficult when I want to have some notion of control in my life. Is it asking a lot to want a semi-clean home? A few moments on Facebook? A phone call with a friend? An extra minute to put product in my hair?
I'm reminded of a former theology professor who spoke of the interior playground--that place where we can go to pray, meditate, contemplate, and delight in God's plenty. Sometimes I have only a minuted to go there while filling up our enormous humidifier with water from the tap. I breathe, close my eyes, and descend into quiet darkness with a mantra filling each breath: Peace. Joy. Hope. Trust. Jesus. Jesus.
Although I am grateful for the experience of living a life of prayer in my 20's, I find this gift of motherhood to be The Great Test. Can I be centered without the Silence and Solitude? Can I enter my sons' playground and that be enough? Is it enough to splash in bowls of water, throw colored pegs around the room, and climb on chairs. I want it to be.
