cookies
In the kitchen, Riley and Zoe bend over a recipe, their brassy heads close, their hair falling off their shoulders. It never gets old, my kids choosing to be together; my kids working side-by-side. I smile, momentarily distracted from my book.
“So, do you want to get the sugar while I get the butter?” Zoe asks, and her tone, for its completely lateral affection, reminds me of something Albert Camus once said, a quote I scrawled in a journal somewhere:
Don’t walk in front of me; I may not follow. Don’t walk behind me; I may not lead. Just walk beside me and be my friend.
I consider it such grace that our children are friends.
“I’m on it!” Riley says, still sparking with excitement over the unexpected opportunity to do something with her sister. Today, Zoe loves not just in words but in action, for it is loving to invite someone else to participate in something we might have more easily or efficiently done alone.
“I thought I might make some cookies, and I thought Riley might like to help me,” she’d said, ambling down the stairs, and Riley had gasped with an expression like Christmas morning, even lifted her hands as though they tingled with glee. She glimmered with the sudden magic of chosenness.
“Oh, I would LOVE to,” Riley said, an expression otherwise Biblically rendered, “Here I am. Send me.” Her tone said, “You are wonderful. I love being with you.”
It was the latter, unspoken sentiment Zoe heard in Riley’s quick agreement, and she’d quietly said, “You think too highly of me, Riley, but thank you.”
Instantly, Riley had forgotten everything she might have done instead, immediately leaving it behind. I thought of the disciples, how at once they left their nets when Jesus invited them to follow. Only now, observing Riley, do I begin to understand how much more naturally that happens when you truly adore the person making the offer.
For years, I’ve been dazzled by the grace of God that leads Him to seek our participation in His work. That He put the treasure of His power in jars of clay; that He gives us gifts by which to serve and bless each other; that He chooses us to embody Him and continues to act with agency through broken people, these truths have long baffled me with joy. I have marveled to think that in every kind of action Christ would live and move through me, that He would invite me also–me–to follow and share His yoke, and yet, when called to the work, I have often expressed reluctance.
“Help me give and love and serve with joy,” I’ve prayed, recognizing in myself an absorption with my own plans that leaves me unenthusiastic about interruptions, even when God’s grace allows me to recognize those interruptions as His invitations to me.
In Life Without Lack, Dallas Willard defines our work as “all the lasting good we will do in a lifetime,” and as such, all that we do with God. I listen to my girls, to the way Riley’s enthusiasm communicates that Zoe is her favorite, and I recognize that the work itself never matters as much my participation in it with the one I love most. It isn’t the thought of making cookies that moves Riley to joyful dedication, but the fact that she gets to make cookies with Zoe. What would it be for my responses to God’s invitations to communicate that He’s my favorite, that doing anything with Him is better than anything else?
I watch my girls move around the kitchen together, listening to how gently Zoe leads and how easily Riley accepts her guidance, and suddenly I know how it will be that I will come to work with God with that kind of immediacy and utter joy, as I have asked. I see how my own resistance and faithlessness and distraction will be conquered by a singular affection for God that makes me truly long to be with Him.
