Martha in the kitchen

 

This afternoon I shouted so loudly and aggressively at my warring children that I literally thought I was having a heart attack. The build up to the explosion reads like a normal day in the life of a full time working mother who is trying to get a million things done in her holidays because she doesn’t have any time to do them when she’s working. 

The highlights package includes a night of bed swapping for the entire family. A lengthy shopping trip with both children. The excursion’s aim was to buy everything we need for our upcoming camping holiday. And yes, I ended up buying a Hotwheels car and over priced kiwis. I made lunch, which Eva refused. I gave her yoghurt which she spilled all over herself. We had several bouts of hysteria based on puzzles, car tracks, dummy usage and cracker bread. I then tried to rest and Eva knocked on my door on five separate occasions. They then went outside to the trampoline directly outside my bedroom and despite a severe warning continued to rage war against each other in tones that only a dog should be able to hear. I then snapped. Properly. 

I did not use kind words. 

And I did not like myself afterwards. 

But… I.Am.Tired. 

Of food, meals, tidying… you know. The whole shebang.

And I am tired of being where the buck stops. 

One of my most spiritual friends, whose job is literally devoted to serving Jesus, was giving the same above monologue to me when we were whining about our lives. When I asked her when she has time to pray she said she relies on her first free lesson in her teaching timetable which then invariably gets pigeonholed by someone else for something else, generally totally unrelated to quality time with God.

So now our time with God has to slot into a timetable. And I’m afraid to say that by the time I’m ready for bed there is very little cognitive resilience left for me to do anything but sleep. 

The other day I listened to a sermon about how Jesus scheduled time to remove himself from people in order to connect with his Father. He would go off onto a mountain, or the wilderness or somewhere that isn’t an obstacle course of Hotwheels tracks and half eaten apples and he would pray. 

And now I’m going to be 100% human and say this out loud. Who cooked the food? Who washed the clothes? Who fed the children? Who kept daily life ticking over so that no one starved?

The answer? Martha and her crew.

Martha and Mary are sisters who teach us the biblical message of priorities. Mary sat and listened at Jesus’ feet and Martha slaved away in the kitchen. 

But everyone had to eat. She had a full household of guests. Supper wasn’t going to make itself. She was on the treadmill of womanhood where if she didn’t do it no one else would.

I know we can serve God and be present with Him in all things but I find that motherhood certainly doesn’t always bring out the best human in me. And I find myself sulking in the kitchen like Martha because the first lunch I prepared has been rejected.

And here’s the thing about motherhood and womanhood. We show up when no one else does. When all the men have run away in fear it is the mothers who sit beneath the cross until the very end. The buck stops with us. And when heaven has been ripped open and the functioning of the entire spiritual cosmos is in disorder we will take the body off the cross and do the practical thing. With few disciples in sight it is we who will wrap Him up and place Him in the tomb. And we will grieve through the Saturday. Some of us will make endless cups of tea, or a casserole or look after all the children. We’ll hug Martha in the kitchen. 

But before we start bashing the cowardly disciples who got to road trip around with Jesus, and walk on water, and eat the fish and the loaves, and pray in the garden, and see Lazarus rise, and be the only ones whose version of events made it into the Bible etc etc etc let us remember this. The most pivotal part of the whole story, the part that sets Jesus aside from every other good person who has walked this earth, is reserved for the mothers. It is reserved for the woman who didn’t fall into a state of fatigue, fear and anxiety. It is for the women who got up early and took the next practical step when dealing with a grief as large as the cosmos. They took their oils and spices to anoint the body of Jesus Christ. And we know what happens next.

God reserved the greatest discovery of the human race’s destiny for two women. Women who served in the background. Women who financed the road trip. Women who don’t get half as much mention and whose names are sometimes muddled with the names of other women. 

He gives the message of salvation and rebirth to the exhausted, treadmill running mothers first. Because he knows that we will always show up, with spices and oils, and casseroles, and hugs, and a Hotwheels car and overpriced kiwi fruits. 

So when you are standing alone in the kitchen ready to be everything you feel a mother shouldn’t be remember that you have been chosen to be the greatest witness of all and the meals you make are valued, and the tears you cry are witnessed and the fatigue you carry is legitimate. But most of all the fact that you show up, despite your grief and burnout, is what God has, and will continue to rely on, in order for His redemption to be completed.