A while back, during one of my nap-time--or maybe it was laundry avoidance (so easily I forget)--internet surfing expeditions, I read a reflection observing how many of us mothers attempt to make room for God on our full plates. Here’s a particularly good part:
. . .everyone has a 'full plate': All have a litany of family and extended
relations, duties, and activities: enough to choke a horse. The number one
question. . . is where does God fit in with all these elements of daily life?
The answer: God doesn't fit on the plate - God is the plate. Or to state it
more accurately: our relationship with God underlies and affects every aspect of
our life.” http://tau-cross.blogspot.com/2008/01/caught-in-catholic-mom-vortex.html
I loved this! I thought about it. I wrote some thoughts on it which are probably even less cohesive than this post will end up being. Is it really true? Or maybe is this idea just a good rational excuse that appealed to my natural inclinations to get “stuff” done and hope that God will forgive any neglect on my part because, after all, I am doing the job he wants me to do, right? In the end (but, really still in the middle), all this thinking has led me to carry the plate analogy even a bit further into my own realm of experience.
In our family, we have a “clean plate club.” I imagine there is some equivalent to this honorary association in most every family. Basically, if you finish your meal and we can see your clean plate, you’re in the club and you are bathed in the enormity of this accomplishment with a healthy dose of applause and congratulations from the club’s charter membership (Matt and me). And, to keep it real, "cleaner than yesterday" plates are pretty okay, too. It’s all very, very exciting.
So, with this “clean plate club” in mind, I thought about this image of God being my plate. . .actually placing on Him all my tasks and responsibilities, all my hopes, joys, sufferings, and challenges (like I say I’m going to do in my morning offering, but really doing it instead of just saying it). Too often the scenario is more like me bulldozing through my day so that I can make some room for “Jesus time” somewhere between defrosting chicken breasts and bleaching the tile grout. I really need to adjust my perspective so that it isn't about clearing off a spot for Him, but to pile it on Him--giving Him that 2 year old, 5 year old, and 7 year old. I need to behave like he's not where I turn after the extinguished fires, completed tasks, and patiently answered questions, but Who I see through them. Accepting and purposing those moment by moment opportunities for grace so that I can actually see Him even under a tiny Cheerio on the floor.
Instead of wondering if after I run my errands if I will find enough time for quiet prayer, I can place that car filled with chattering children on Him and consider that car ride as a prayer to serve Him through patient and attentive conversation with those children.
And with such intentional plate clearing, little by little, I can still work towards maybe one day seeing a gleaming clean plate. But, perhaps, more importantly, I will grow more acutely aware of the One who underlies everything I am and do. Without Him, it’s just work. With Him, it can be grace.
I have no better example than the Blessed Mother in terms of the purpose of my own motherhood. Pope Benedict quoted St. Augustine in his homily this year on the Solemnity of Mary: “The divine motherhood would have been of no value to her had Christ not borne her in his heart, with a destiny more fortunate than the moment when she conceived him in the flesh” (De Sancta Virginitate,3, 3). Obviously, this is not a devaluing of the Incarnation or of daily service and obedience in motherhood. But, rather, it serves me as a really helpful reminder that just as conceiving Jesus in the flesh was indeed valuable for Mary, so are my “fleshly” efforts as a mother, but only as they participate in the “more fortunate” destiny intended for me. Him.
Gosh, it seems so elementary. . .so obvious! Isn’t this what I hear at just about every women’s Scripture study I attend? Isn’t this what I read about from the lives of the saints? Isn’t this confirmed in my own life whenever I start my day with a well intentioned morning offering? Still, apparently, I need a little random reminder here and there. . .
The possibilities are as endless as my plate is full and God never ceases to show Himself to me, if only I would take a second to look!
The work of plate cleaning is only really meaningful if I can glimpse Him underneath it all. And even on days when my daily plate ends up not being all that clean, I needn’t lament a lapse in my club membership. I can still bath in the unspeakable enormity of God’s boundless grace poking through the holes in my “not nearly clean enough plate.”
Back to cleaning my plate. . .My cup runneth over!
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