Living-Deliberately.com

It was somewhere after a long day of schooling the kids, done with a sort of “movie hangover” headache from a: staying up too late to watch all of Walk the Line and b: not taking the time to purge the FOUR movie reviews swimming in my brain today into some kind of written form. Still after the afternoon tidy, thus repairing the kitchen from said long day of schooling the kids, and after a somewhat reassuring phone call from a friend, I was sweeping, knowing I was headed next to marinate the meat for dinner.

I’ve started praying the “Jesus Prayer” while doing my more mundane chores…stuff like washing dishes, sorting laundry, and sweeping. It goes, “O Lord Jesus, have mercy on me, a sinner.” It’s an easy line to remember, a way to “pray without ceasing”, and has a nice rhythm to it. I’ve been contemplating how I can view my life, the way I spend my days, almost as it’s own monastic order….to live deliberately, in service and contemplation without viewing that as somehow incompatible with a joyous, sometimes boisterous and busy life as a wife and mother. It would seem to me, that if God gave me one and is calling me to another, that there is some way for them to harmonize. Praying through work is one way to do that.

So I was sweeping orange cracker crumbs off the green floor, cat food bits and bits of lace from Celia’s crafts, when the words, “count it all joy” interrupted my prayer line. Did someone say it? Was it an answer to the prayer? I don’t know. Maybe? I went and looked up the rest of the words,

“My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have it’s perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.” James 1: 2-4

Ah. And so you know? I don’t think there is a scripture verse that I can call to mind that describes better how I want to be. Someone who sees a purpose in trial, a joy rather than a nagging complaining. The idea that I could become “perfect”, so content and complete that I lack nothing.

It makes those cheese cracker crumbs look a little different. Less trivial. And certainly the hard day of school too. If this is my work, if “how I spend my days is how I spend my life”, then sweeping crumbs and teaching little ones to read, cleaning clothes and marinating meat becomes, dare I say it, my kingdom work? If finding time to pray is my trial, then it can be my trial that helps produce patience, which has it’s own goal in helping me become complete. The hope of that brings me joy, which brings me back to the beginning of the verse, “count it all joy“.

Imagine it….the humble tasks that make up our day, that we are tempted to groan and grumble and complain about, can actually be part of a beautiful work in our souls. I don’t know what else to say but, “may it be so!”. What a way to transcend the mundane!

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