It’s always amazed me how the thing I need to hear often shows up exactly when I need to hear it. As usual, I was late to get around to reading an article (clearly I missed it the first time, it’s from 2023!) but Zina Hitz’s piece “Other Monks” in Plough found its way onto my reading list recently, and it was provoking–in a very good way.

Hitz lived for a time at Madonna House, a Catholic community founded by Catherine Doherty where laity and priests live together in community and simplicity, serving the poor. Her description of her experiences felt perfectly true to my own brief experience with community life (though to be fair, I chose my companions):

I learned to see that life with unchosen strangers laid bare one’s own faults so that one lives with a painful self-consciousness, regularly realized if not constant.

The sort of non-homogeneous community Hitz found at Madonna House is what we hope to move toward with our own Catholic Worker group – but for the most part I think we still fall into the same category with which Hitz labels her own friends of choice: “all bookish, and all middle class.” There is room for improvement in my own life if I want to love as Christ loved, leaving no one out. But that was not the insight that made me pause and blush with recognition, this was:

Among the forms of human speech sacrificed in common life are gossip, trivial comments about the lives of others: complaints, hasty judgments, salacious stories, speculations, cruel entertainments, and gratuitous criticism.

My first thought was, “If I said none of those things, my house would be very quiet…”

But how to break out of these habits of speech? This is not the main question of Hitz’s article, but it was the question the article raised for me. I could start any number of places – the way I correct my children, the stories I share with my husband, my reaction to the news, or traffic, or broken household appliances (I’m looking at you, mircowave)…and yet even as I consider how to stop complaining a little joke-complaint slips in. It looks to be an uphill battle.

***

A little later in the article Hitz continues:

[My friend groups] were, perhaps, intelligent, wise, authentic, morally upright, or edgy. Perhaps we drank fresh-brewed coffee rather than instant, read books rather than watched movies, or had in other respects excellent taste in consumer products. Nonetheless, such garden-variety exclusion is the antithesis of unconditional love.(emphasis added)

She held up a mirror, and what I saw was not pretty. I probably say something along these lines several times a day, I laugh about it, I have (mostly unintentionally) taught my kids to think like this. But I think Hitz is right: when we judge first, there is no opportunity for love to take root.

I don’t have a solution, or even a plan of action to work on this. Yet here, perhaps, is a place to start: with humility. However good I may consider my coffee or book choices to be, I am well aware that there are many things I just don’t know or understand. Could a stance of humility and curiosity – and, for me personally, a willingness to ask questions rather than play the part of quiet know-it-all – be a first step? My kids are very good at this; maybe I need to take some lessons from them.

I know what I don’t want: my hasty judgements, uncharitable speech, and “garden-variety exclusion” to prevent me from forming interesting, loving friendships with people whom my very limited imagination doesn’t recognize as good candidates for part of my community.

***

I just finished reading The Duty of Delight: The Diaries of Dorothy Day (how’s that for some alliteration). Over and over again Day prays that she will learn to control her tongue – to speak less, less hastily, and less critically. At the beginning of 1960 she writes:

This year I must strive for gentleness and listening–less talking, no passing judgements, no impatience. God help me.

And all I can say to that is, “Me too. Amen.”

I want to take just a minute to brag.

In 2019, I started looking into the Zero Waste movement. After some reading and research, I despaired of ever reaching the “only a canning jar of trash a year” level, but I also decided to make an effort to reduce the amount of trash our family sends to the landfill. Though I don’t agree with her about everything, Bea Johnson’s book, Zero Waste Home, was invaluable to this project.

For New Year’s 2020, I resolved to get our family trash output down to one five-gallon bucket a week. The looks on the faces of the folks at the New Year’s Eve party at which I announced this goal were not encouraging. Such a thought had clearly never crossed some of their minds, and the logic behind such a goal was inconceivable.

Still, I made an attempt. Between refusing to bring home things we didn’t need, shopping to avoid packaging, recycling, and composting, we got down to buckets a week. Nothing to sneeze at.

Then COVID hit, and suddenly everything had to be sterile, which meant so much more plastic and packaging. And of course it meant so many disposable masks. It also set me back in a zero-waste area where I had been making progress: plastic grocery bags.

I had been doing a reasonably good job of remembering my reusable shopping bags, but suddenly they weren’t allowed. I was going to get plastic, like it or not. (Why I never thought to ask for paper instead I just don’t know.) And the plastic bags can be useful – I put them in small trash cans, use them to send the gobs of satsumas from our tree to friends, and they accompany the dog on all his walks. Still, I didn’t need nearly so many.

Three years later, a milestone. Reusable bags have been allowed back in our grocery stores for some time now, and this New Year’s, I’m proud to say that we ran out of plastic grocery bags at our house. I actually took some from my mom so that we’d have a stash for the bathroom trashcan.

It’s a small victory; it’s not nearly enough, of course. But it’s also a reminder that we can change our lifestyles for the better. It might take a while, and there will likely be set-backs. But when I think of all the plastic bags that aren’t blowing down the side of the highway and floating in the Vermillion and riding off to a recycling facility (where they may or may not actually be recycled), it feels like I accomplished something.

Christmas is almost here, and with the last week of Advent comes the frantic rush to finish buying and making Christmas gifts. Despite my best efforts, it seems like there are always one or two people (at least) who still have me stumped right into the week before Christmas.

Usually, it’s not the kids who create the difficulty. Little boys in particular are good at rejoicing over all kinds of toys, and thankfully all my kids love books. And then there is something about the way a child receives a present. Sometimes I am a little disheartened by the expectation that my children exude at Christmas: “I can’t wait for my presents!” and especially, right in the middle of Christmas morning, “Are there more?”

I think (I hope, anyway!) that there is something else going on here besides sheer selfishness. I hope that our children, for the most part, know that their parents, grandparents, and other friends and family love them, and often show that love by giving them good things. So even if I’d rather they seem a little less eager, it makes sense that they would expect many good things from the hands of their loved ones – their experience (again, for the most part!) has taught them that this is how life, and especially Christmas, works.

I just finished reading Marilynne Robinson’s Home for the first time, and when I finished it, I had to re-read its sister novel, Gilead. (Which I highly recommend doing during your Christmas break – read them both, back to back, in the order of your choice. They are rich separately, but magnificent together.) Anyway, as I was reading Gilead right at the beginning of Advent, one line stopped me cold: “But I hope you will put yourself in the way of the gift.” (Page 114, in case anyone is counting.)

Put yourself in the way of the gift. Robinson’s character, Reverend Ames, writes these words to his son, specifically about his faith and his acceptance of their church. He hopes his son will allow God to speak into his life, so that he can receive the gift of faith.

I think about our kids at Christmas time hanging around the decorated tree and the presents waiting under it. When an adult walks by, their eyes are uplifted and eager. Their hands are open, ready to receive whatever is offered. They are ready: they have put themselves “in the way of the gift.”

This is the posture we need to assume in the spiritual life as well, as Reverend Ames recognizes. We can’t accept whatever God has to give us with our hands in fists and our faces turned away; rather we must open our eyes, hands, and hearts to the Holy Infant like children around a Christmas tree, ready and eager for the gifts we know He desires to give us.

I had intentions of writing a grand four week Advent series…but Thanksgiving got the better of me last week, and this has been the week of the Stomach Bug. By the time the clothes, sheets, comforters, floors, and dog were all washed, there wasn’t much time left for writing. So that carefully planned, well-researched series will have to wait. Maybe until Lent.

My writing wasn’t the only one of our plans up-ended by this very annoying little virus. Our oldest turned fifteen this week, but festivities were muted, to say the least. Dance classes, violin lessons, school (home- and otherwise) all had to take a back seat to laundry and naps. I couldn’t even manage the little Jesse Tree ornaments and readings I had planned for this Advent. We’ll be playing catch-up with those for a while.

We all had many opportunities this week to practice patience. Practice being the key word – we failed again and again, and just had to keep trying. And the girls spent a good bit of time delirious (from exhaustion and empty stomachs) which they seemed to enjoy and will probably remember fondly for years to come.

It was not exactly how I had hoped to start our Advent. I didn’t have big, outrageous plans to begin with…but I had hoped to be a little bit focused and intentional. The challenges of Week One have forced us to streamline – Advent wreath at supper, special night prayer. A pile of Advent and Christmas books available. Advent Calendar up and running. And that’s it.

Obviously there is still plenty of time to add decorations and get the Jesse Tree back on track. Still, our week doesn’t look terribly “successful” compared to many of the beautiful, complicated Advent decorations and homeschool schemes I like to read about online. But I know one thing: I probably prayed more and harder during the first week of Advent 2021 than any other I can remember. So despite the demise of my well-laid plans, I’ll call that one part a success, and be thankful for the chance to try again next week.

Last week, I spent some time exploring the situation our local libraries are in and how we got here. This week, I’d like to continue the discussion by looking at some of the benefits a strong library system brings to our community — in other words, what we risk losing if the millage ultimately fails and the library loses the 38% of its budget those tax dollars represent.

I’ll put a nice long list of amenities the Lafayette Public Library provides towards the end of the post, but I’d like to start with something more personal. 

We’ve been homeschooling for roughly eight years now, and I can say with conviction that our homeschool could not function as it does — almost could not exist — without the public library. 

Last week when I took stock, we had over $1,000 worth of library materials (books and audiobooks) in our home. A good portion of those are “for fun” reading (which some of us call “building fluency”) but a good portion are also dedicated to learning new information. I recently returned a stack of books on Egypt. This year our assigned (library sourced) reading has also included a children’s version of Gilgamesh, Old Yeller, The Cricket in Times Square, books on ancient Mesopotamia and how energy works…the list goes on, and it’s barely November.

The point is, my husband is a school teacher, with a school teacher’s salary. I don’t really get paid to write. There is no way we could give our children the education they currently enjoy without our libraries, and we are grateful. We could be paying hundreds of dollars for the use of these “curriculum materials,” and it would still be a great deal. For the upcoming millage, we pay roughly $11. I couldn’t purchase any one of the books about Egypt for that price.

(There is a greater good here, as well — libraries are key to a strong democracy. Because they give everyone, regardless of their ability to pay, access to information, they lay the groundwork for an educated and involved public. This isn’t my idea — it was Ben Franklin’s. But to get back to our story…)

When we first moved to Acadiana, we lived in the wild Cajun prairie between Grand Coteau and Arnaudville. We soon learned that, despite our St. Landry Parish address, we could get a Lafayette Public Library card. The Sunset Community Library (St. Landry) was closer, but North Regional Library in Carencro was on the way to most of the places we went…and it had story time. Mrs. Anna, the children’s librarian, was pretty much my kids’ first friend in Acadiana. Every week I got four small children out of the trailer and into the magic of books, songs, sidewalk chalk, bubbles, and exploring the library. We didn’t have internet at home, so it was also my only computer time, and my only access to a printer. It’s hard to express what the library meant to us that year, but one word might sum it up: connection.

Again, once the library re-opened for drive-thru services after quarantine, it was one of the few options for entertainment at that time. I’d order books online (we did have internet by then, thankfully) and pick them up at the window, along with take-home crafts for the kids. We also, appropriately, borrowed the board game “Pandemic.” The librarians provided online story times and events to help parents cope and our community stay connected.

Which brings me to the promised long list of library services we risk losing if we don’t care for our libraries. There are the obvious things that can be checked out: books, music, movies, video games, board games, air quality monitors, musical instruments. Plus all the digital resources — magazines, books, newspapers, genealogy information, and research databases. And if our library doesn’t have a book, they will go out of their way to get it. Need an obscure book on life in Roman-occupied Israel? That’s what interlibrary loan is for.

There are the spaces open to all: meeting and study rooms available for reservation, a quiet place in a world that is noisy, a warm place in winter and a cool place in summer, a place where one is allowed to loiter in a world where people are often only welcome if they plan to spend money. Our churches are usually locked these days, but the library still provides a seat and a little rest for those with no where else to go.

There are the services: tax and legal and resume assistance programs, nutrition and exercise programs (some day I will make it to the Zumba class), literacy programs for children and adults, craft time and story time and speakers on all sorts of topics. My oldest two girls and I heard Ernest Gaines speak at our library a couple of years ago. When Lucy read A Lesson Before Dying in English this fall, she already had a connection to the author. That is priceless.

There is the equipment: access to computers, internet, and printers. In the Maker Spaces patrons can use sewing machines, sergers, 3-D printers, dye-cut machines, typewriters, and more.

And there is the community a library creates. Moms meet at story time and then schedule their own play dates. People meet at craft events and become friends; people meet at book clubs and learn from each other. 

If all this isn’t enough, libraries also mean good jobs and higher property values. Even if you never set foot in the library, you still benefit.

Some people in our community argue that these resources aren’t worth our tax dollars. I disagree. I think we should be hesitant to undervalue community, literacy, and an educated populace. As Catholics, we believe we have an obligation to develop the whole person towards holiness; our public libraries (rightly used, of course, but that is another very long post!) make the space and the resources available for people to do just that. If our goal is human flourishing, libraries are a step in the right direction.

All that said, the discussion circles around and ends where it began for me. For our family, the library, more than anything else, means books. Books mean stories. Stories are where we meet people like us, people unlike us, and ourselves. I believe in stories because I believe in the Word, and I believe one place in which we can encounter Him is in stories. So join me at the polls this coming Saturday, November 13, please, and support our community’s access to these stories.

I think everyone who knows us knows one thing about us: our family loves books. The bookshelves line the walls to the point that there’s no room to hang art. There are stacks by everyone’s desk, on everyone’s nightstand, and (often) in the van. Naturally, something else comes with our love of books: a love for our public library.

The Lafayette Public Library is at an inflection point. One of its two millages is on the ballot November 13 – a millage that represents 38% of the library system’s annual operating revenue. Normally, this kind of millage renewal is almost a given. The same sort of property tax is used to fund police, firefighters, parks, drainage, and other civil services. But in 2018, Lafayette learned that public support for libraries could not be taken for granted.

In 2018, a new PAC was formed – Citizens for a New Louisiana. The PAC spent upwards of $20,000, including a direct mailing to Lafayette Parish residents, arguing that the library system had too much money in reserve to need this millage renewal.

The voters agreed — at least, roughly 650 more voters agreed than disagreed, in an election that had only 8% voter turnout. The result was a $3.6 million budget cut for the libraries. 

If that weren’t enough, voters also pulled $10 million from the library’s reserve funds and rededicated it to drainage and parks. Then property values dropped in 2020, delivering another hit to the library’s budget. The Parish council voted to adjust a remaining millage to make up for the short fall, since the library has not been receiving the full 2 mills the voters awarded them in the first place, but Mayor-President Josh Guillory vetoed the proposal.

All of which means that the November 13 millage vote is truly make-or-break for our libraries.

Geoff Daily has a very clear run-down of the implications over at The Current, so I won’t go into all the details. But the important thing to know is that if this millage fails, some of our libraries will close. $4 million are on the line, and there is absolutely no way to save $4 million by cutting corners here and there. There are a couple of possible scenarios floating out there, but if you visit any branch other than Main, your favorite library is in danger.

This situation is especially depressing because of the steps Lafayette has taken to build its library system over the past twenty years. With the 2019 opening of West Regional Library in Scott, the city completed a project voters approved twenty years ago to renovate Main and build four regional libraries. Our system, in fact, was awarded the James O. Modisette Award for Public Libraries in 2020, recognizing the improvements made in the libraries’ service to the community. That’s the highest honor the Louisiana Library Association can give to a public library system. 

It would be a shame to throw away the work of the past two decades, work that has made Lafayette Public Libraries one of the premier systems in the state, because the citizens of Lafayette don’t want to contribute $20 per year per household.

Wait – what? You can see for yourself. The Library has set up a calculator to estimate how much property tax a household will pay for this millage. 

Our family pays $11.96 a year. Less than $2 a person.

To put that in perspective, one picture book costs roughly $17 these days. I gathered up all the library books in our house (that I could find – you know how that is!) and added up the total. We have $1,011 worth of library materials in our home at this moment. And since that’s not counting computer and printer access, programming, digital checkouts, take-home crafts, and use of the space (a couple of hours a month, at least), and assistance from librarians, I think we’re getting our money’s worth.

There are many more reasons you should vote to fund our libraries…but I don’t want to try my dear readers’ patience with a longer blog post. So I plan to finish this conversation next week. If you don’t already love your library enough to make you put up some home-made “Save Our Libraries” yard signs, hopefully next week’s post will convince you that you should.

I wait all summer for this time of year, when the heat finally breaks. Towards the end of August there’s a little something in the air that’s different, a hint that someday it will be safe to wear sweaters again. It’s not actually any cooler, but the breeze seems to hold a promise for the future.

This week, it made good on that promise.

We’ve thrown the windows open, and pulled out the winter clothes for the kids. It’s still warm in the afternoons, of course, but the ten day forecast doesn’t show us reaching 90°. Fall weather arrived just in time for Fall.

A break from the heat changes life around here. It’s suddenly reasonable to take walks with the kids after breakfast, and to continue working in the garden after the sun climbs up over the pine trees. The cool air makes me itch to tidy the house. (Goodness knows it needs it!) The kids spend even more of the day outside, riding bikes, chasing each other with sticks, and laying in the grass, reading.

This weather always feels like a new beginning to me, as if now, at last, we can actually get something done. Maybe we can finally pull the weeds out from around the blueberry bushes, or clean up the back porch so it’s useable in this beautiful weather.

Of course, by the time I get through all the day-to-day duties, and school work, and a little time for writing, the blueberries tend to keep their weedy undergrowth. (We like to think of it as “living mulch.”) But part of the promise of Fall is time – months and months before the sweltering heat comes back in May. Of course I won’t finish my to-do list before then (I never do) but I’m ready to make a start.

Our oldest daughter left our homeschool this year and started “real” high school. She’s been treking from class to class for about a month now, and this week her great secret was exposed: she doesn’t have a cell phone.

It came up in her debate class, while the teacher was apparently trying to draw the students’ attention to the seeming contradiction between considering “large corporations” “evil” and carrying iphones in their pockets. After a little while of this, Lucy raised her hand and ratted herself out. She didn’t even blame her parents for this ridiculous circumstance. Apparently the teacher was at a bit of a loss – who was this strange child who had been sitting quietly in his classroom all these weeks without a phone?

Her teacher did ask her why she didn’t have a cell phone – every other child in the class does, and presumably nearly every other child in the school. She didn’t have a well-thought-out answer ready, but by the time she made it to the car line, she had some thoughts. Among them, that she doesn’t want to waste so much of her time on screens.

One thing we learned quickly when she started “real” school was that while we had prepared her reasonably well for the academic work, she was not up to speed on the technology the modern student is expected to use. She had sent emails, but never had to deal with her own email account. Now there are Google Classrooms to be navigated. Powerpoints are an option for projects. And then she had to do an animation of mitosis for biology. After trying out three of four different programs, and spending hours trying to get all the pieces together, the project was still late. (So were several of her classmates’ projects, so apparently technology was not the only difficulty with that particular assignment.) She’s picking it all up quickly, but she’s also spending way more time on screens than ever before. And as much as she’s enjoying the school experience, she doesn’t love the screens.

We have our own reasons for not offering our kids cell phones, of course. My husband and I both taught in one-to-one high schools (where the school gives every student a laptop and expects every teacher to use it in their classroom) and we saw what unfettered access does. At best, it’s a distraction. At worst, it is a gateway to sin and self-loathing. (See any of the recent news reports on Facebook, Instagram, and teen body image, or this article from the Atlantic for a start.) Being a teen is hard enough – who needs constant reminders of how beautiful and perfect other people are (or seem to be) for constant comparison?

We don’t need the science to tell us how addictive screens and particularly social media are – we see it every day. My suspicion is that the reason Lucy’s school allows cell phone use by students during lunch and breaks is that they simply can’t stop it. To keep a semblance of order on a campus crawling with 2,000 teenagers, you can’t go out looking for trouble. Think about what happens to an addict when the drug is removed; now imagine students with that itch in the back (or front) of their minds trying to focus on Algebra. Good luck.

It’s too bad, really, because one of the first experiences Lucy reported to us when she started school was how strange lunch was. Not because the cafeteria hadn’t quite worked out getting all the students through the lunch line before the lunch period was over. Not because they eat in their fifth-period class because of Covid contract tracing guidelines. It was strange because everyone else in her class, except the teacher, spent the whole of their lunch period staring at their phones.

This is a world we haven’t prepared our children for.

I don’t regret this choice, or intend to do anything differently. I’m stubbornly convinced that it’s better for our kids (not to mention myself) to interact with an admittedly limited number of people and objects in the real world than with a larger number through a screen. My hope is that our kids will learn to use the technology as tools, because we aren’t on a Luddite farming commune with next to no need to contact the outside world. To some extent our kids will have to live with the technology that now infuses our society. But that doesn’t mean the technology has to infuse every moment of their lives, as well.

It’s a difficult line to walk. I’m on social media (you may have gotten to this blog that way, in fact) because it does have the power to connect. If I had to write out and mimeograph a newsletter every week instead of blogging…I probably wouldn’t. I’ve done numerous Zoom meetings and classes, and learned a lot that I wouldn’t have had an opportunity to otherwise. On the other hand, the amount of will-power it takes not to tumble into the social media time vortex is sometimes more than I possess. And if I can’t do it, why should I expect my children’s teenage brains, which are biologically less able to think long-term and correctly gauge risk, to be able to make better decisions than I can?

Our kids won’t be getting phones any time soon, at least not smart phones. Will it make their social lives harder? Absolutely, at least in how “connected” they will be able to be to their friends. On the other hand, maybe it will be easier to be able to walk away from a bully and not see their messages on the last thing most teens see before they go to bed at night.

There is a selfish motive behind all this, too. We happen to really, really like our kids. We like to see their faces. We like to talk to them. We don’t want them to have the blue zombie glow going on all the time. And while I understand the importance of peers to the teenager’s emotional development, I also think there can be too much of a good thing.

Especially now that our oldest spends so much of the day away from the family, those hours in the evenings and weekends that we have together are precious, and I intend to guard them jealously. Not just because Lucy is still my child and it is still my responsibility (and joy!) to form her into an adult, but because I want her to have that down time that allows for meandering thoughts, reading for pleasure, practicing calligraphy or drawing or baking. I know that she values these things, and I want to do what I can to help her have the time for them. Keeping her technology use to a minimum goes a long way towards that goal.

It feels a little ridiculous to be writing this alone in my room, the blue light from my laptop shining on my face. I spend more hours than I’d like on screens myself. But my hope is that it can stay in its proper place: a tool, useful for some things, but not a good in itself.

I came across this passage in one of Dorothy Day’s monthly columns for the Catholic Worker paper the other day, written when she was staying with her daughter before the birth of her third grandchild:

“It has been a month of ‘ice, rains, snow and stormy winds,’ and every morning after the routine of fires, breakfasts and dressing has taken place, Becky, Susie and I rock in the wicker chair and sing, ‘All ye works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord; oh ye ice and snow, oh ye cold and wind, oh ye winter and summer, oh ye trees in the woods, oh ye fire in the stove, oh ye Becky and Susie, bless ye the Lord, praise Him and magnify Him forever.’ It is a song with infinite variations. You can include Mr. Clark’s cows, Leslie’s horses, the Hennessy goats, and all the human beings for miles around…What are we here for anyway except to praise Him, to adore Him and to thank Him? … and there is plenty to remind us of that in the country.”

-Dorothy Day, On Pilgrimage (in the CW paper – not the book) March 1948

We have our own verses to add lately. (Because of course you don’t have to be in the country to come up with more.)

Swallowtails and zinnias, bless the Lord.

Sprouts and seedlings, bless the Lord.

And as Hurricane Ida gets here, it will be winds and rains, bless the Lord. Fortissimo.

It’s a good reminder: we aren’t on Earth just to work and to suffer, we are here to praise God. Last week our praise (besides morning prayer) included our school work and dance and play-doh and some spent-grain bread; next week I expect it will include fallen-limb removal.

The pre-hurricane preparations are finished, except for the boards for the picture window, which we’ll do tonight. And then comes the waiting. And we get to be reminded just how small and not in control we are.

We studied the Holocaust in our homeschool a little while back. It was hard in so many ways, (how do you explain so much evil to children?) but it was past time I came back to it myself, and definitely time my older girls started to learn about it.

One of the things I had missed (or forgotten) about the concentration camps was the sign that hung at the gate of Auschwitz: “Work makes one free.” Which, obviously, was a blatant lie in that context, but it struck me like a slap in the face, because a part of me believes that, at least under normal circumstances, it is a true statement.

I would never have listed it as a tenent of my philosophy. “Work is good,” maybe. Or “Work is healthy.” Or “Work is necessary.” But seeing “Work is freedom” in that context made me realize that even if I wouldn’t say it, I often act as if it were true.

If I can just get the house clean, then I can relax. If I fold all the laundry first, then I can play with the kids. Or I tell the kids, After you finish your chores you can play.

Clearly there is nothing wrong with being conscientious about work and chores. But what I realized was that when that work comes first, and when I let it rule my life and come ahead of my family, ahead of prayer, then it’s no longer the life-giving “tending the garden” which God asks of us, and instead makes an idol of productivity.

(I should say this seems to be extra tricky for those of whose work IS our families – when is folding laundry doing the good work of the Kingdom, and when are we making it an idol that separates us from God and the very families we’re trying to serve? I would be open to any advice on achieving a balance here!)

The point is not that work is bad (another heresy common in our culture), but that it is not the source of our freedom.

Jesus Christ is the source of our freedom.

If we are too old or too young or too broken to work, we still have our value and freedom in Christ. When we start there, with our dignity as sons and daughters of God, then our work is no longer a title which defines us, nor a representation of our worth, but a gift we are able to share with our families and our communities.

I’m not advocating for a messy house either, necessarily. I know I am more at peace when the floor isn’t hidden under a pile of Legos and stuffed animals. But I believe there is something my kids need more than a spotless house: a mom who remembers where her freedom, and theirs, comes from. That is, they need a mom who is free to toss a ball or read a book, even if it means the laundry has to wait till tomorrow.

It’s time I add becoming that mom to my (long) list of works-in-progress.