even when I make mistakes
When finally God begins to move me and I carry our quiet conversation back into busier thoroughfares, I find Adam emptying the dishwasher in the kitchen. He stacks plates and tosses clean silverware into the drawer with percussive clatter, and this with the morning barely an hour old. The coffee pot still gasps and sputters as steam escapes and drifts away. I smile, laying a hand flat on his back, enjoying the warmth of him, the brightness in his eyes, the happy bounce of his movements across the kitchen. Adam swings a dish towel in one hand; it moves back and forth in time with his chin, pulled by some inaudible rhythm.
“Ah, good job,” Adam says softly, interpreting my smile.
“Yes. Very good job,” I tell him. “I’m proud of you.”
Proud, though Adam’s execution of the task could hardly be described as perfect.
In a high cabinet sits a thermal mug we can’t use right now because Adam can’t tell us where he put the lid. When Adam doesn’t know where something belongs, he makes up a place instead of asking where. On another morning like this one, he stowed the top to that mug in some random, hidden place, and there it still sits, waiting for our discovery. Of course, Adam doesn’t mean to fail us by not seeking the proper place; he just finds such an investigation both incredibly hard and terribly inefficient. Where questions are tough for Adam to answer, not to mention to compose.
Nearly every day, I reorganize the plastic containers that fit like a puzzle in their deep drawer, because Adam struggles to make sense of my organizational strategy. He leaves behind a mismatched jumble of bottoms and lids that make the drawer impossible to open. Routinely, I find measuring spoons in the wrong places in the divider where I sort them, and everything called a spoon winds up in a teetering pile in our silverware drawer, because Adam hasn’t quite figured out the distinguishing categories–serving, table, tea. Juice glasses and tea glasses and coffee mugs wind up in a chaotic, often teetering mix in our cabinets, as do cooking spoons and spatulas and ice cream scoops in the drawer beside the stove.
But my delight rests not in the perfection of Adam’s performance, but in the love and determination that makes him try to do well for me.
Sometimes, when we clean together in the evenings after supper, I guide Adam’s hands. I show him how to dry things well, how to sort more carefully. I show him where things belong when I find him turning about with no idea what to do with what he holds in his hands. See? That goes here. And while I teach him, Adam reaches for my ears and flicks them with his fingers, an affection he began when I could still carry him in my arms, because his body finds the pressure of hugs uncomfortable.
“I’m proud of you,” I tell him, and he laughs. It’s the sweet sound of freedom, of the kind of joy that comes from knowing that he is, in fact, enough.
And suddenly, as those four words roll off my tongue with certainty, I realize that, by grace, I am also enough. Me, the one who often feels puzzled about what to do with the things she holds in her hands; the one who puts things in the wrong place and says things at the wrong time; the one who, while still learning, still struggles to distinguish the better way; the one who, for love, wants to do well for God.
This morning, in a sweet, careful moment of teaching, God showed me something I had never considered before. Did you know that on the day God invited Solomon to ask for anything he wanted, Solomon’s obedience looked messy and imperfect? The new king, who knew himself as “only a little child (1 Kings 3:7)” before God, offered one thousand sacrifices in the wrong place, at an unauthorized place of worship called a high place. And yet, that very night, in that very mixed-up place, God appeared to Solomon in a dream and offered Solomon his choice of gift. Could it be that God delighted in Solomon’s offerings even though Solomon’s efforts were misplaced?
Could it be that God is proud of my obedience, even when I make mistakes?
Adam stands at that drawer now–the one where we keep the plastic containers–trying to get it closed, but the jumble of random lids and too-tall, mismatched stacks makes the effort impossible. He pushes, but the drawer won’t budge. I smile again, filled with a love for my son that moves me to tears, and draw near to show him the better way.
Yes, I think so.
