I find myself doing this more and more often as of late. I call and she comes running, ready to fetch, to carry, to hold, to help. I learn to push aside impatience even as I train her to help me fold a family sized load of laundry, stack dishes and sweep floors.
Tonight I ask her to open a bag of peas, carefully pour them in the bowl I provide. I jiggle fussy baby on my hip and stir sauce into pasta.
The bowl is too small, she goes too quickly and suddenly there are frozen peas rolling in every which direction, much to the toddler's delight. And before I can stop myself, out of me pours pure poison.
"Dinah! I said carefully! Great, now look at this mess!"
Even as the words tumble out, I know they are wrong, wrong, horribly wrong. Her head bows meekly. I try to bite my tongue.
"I'm sorry, Mom...the bowl was too small and I lost control."
She scrambles to retrieve tiny green orbs rolling here and there.
No, sweet, it was I who lost control.
I, who wonders if I'll ever get this thing right. Motherhood is the final exam but there was no preparing me for this and I wonder if she knows that even Mamas are in desperate need of daily forgiveness. Unending grace.
My face grows hot. She counts out 6 forks and heads into the dining room to set the table, unasked.
Am I to be the first to break her heart? Her own mother, the first to make her feel the sting of failure?
I think of all the mothers I have known. My own and those of others. How quickly and how easily we can judge them all and find them lacking in one way or another. Becoming a Mom has transformed my view of these women - the ones who have lived lives poured out to others, yet fumble in predictably human ways. Imperfect. In need of grace. In need of forgiveness from the very children they brought into this world.
I finish preparing dinner and find the table set, neatly waiting. Dinah folding napkins.
I cup her little face in my hands and tell her how marvelous she is. How much I love her. She smiles and pats my hand.
"Its ok, Mom. I know."
“Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven."
Matthew 18:2-6 ESV
