hope for reluctant workers like me
After supper and all our lingering, we wander from the table on the porch like suddenly unmoored boats, drifting away beneath the glow of the twinkle lights. Our conversation fades with a last few dropped notes above the drone of the cicadas and the clatter of silverware against our plates as we collect the remnants and carry them inside.
When I reach the sink to unburden my hands, Adam has already begun the cleaning. The dishwasher door still bobs a little on it’s hinges as he drags the bottom rack out and sets to work rinsing dirty plates. Setting down the stack in my hands, I reach over and place a flat hand lightly against his back. Thank you. Well done. He glances at me and smiles, tossing his head back and forth to some silent song, whistling lightly. I turn away to survey the kitchen and begin the process of putting away any left over food, thinking about how far Adam and I have come since the days when he did not know the difference between a dirty and clean dish. In his early days emptying and filling the dishwasher, we often had to rewash clean dishes after Adam had slung dirty ones right on top of them or scavenge the shelves and drawers for dirty things he had put away as clean. In those days, our son complained audibly about the work. “Dishwasher is finished,” he would say, or “Dishwasher until,” which was a plea for an exact and predictable end to his servitude. But these days, I need only move toward the kitchen and Adam follows to help me, reaching for the clean towel I keep folded and ready beside the sink. Time and maturity have replaced Adam’s reluctance with responsibility, and finally now, I don’t even have to ask.
“I’ll know you’ve learned responsibility when you do the work without being asked,” my mom once told little-girl me, more than a couple of years into the same learning. First, she taught me how to discern clean from unclean, and then, how to discover contentment in my work. But this last bit came as a launch of its own, a becoming I chose, an unmooring that took me into uncharted realms of independence. Finally, I had to find my own motivation to serve.
Certain jobs Adam understands to be his, and these he executes with alertness, readiness, and practice. He works quietly and without fanfare, setting aside a preferred activity to take out a bag of trash I have just slipped free of the can or to clean the bathrooms on Mondays. He seems always to know when the dishwasher has just finished hot drying another load, as though checking the status of that appliance has become a simple part of his routine. For a moment now, I stand and watch the movement of Adam’s long arms as he carefully tilts a plate beneath the water, brushing off the clingy crumbs. Words have failed us so many times, and still somehow my son has grown, like a seed putting down roots in unlikely climes or a crop just out of reach. I can’t think of a single structured lesson that brought us exactly here.
What can there be but hope then, for us seeds still struggling to own the things God has chosen for us to do, for reluctant workers like me who inevitably grumble or set limits on the giving of our hearts? Hope, though maybe we find it unlikely we’ll ever choose the towel on our own or readily set down our preferences to join in His work. Hope, that somewhere in the dark, uncharted waters of our hearts, God makes servants of us yet.
