it really isn't my day
Maybe—when I capture it here in flat black letters and solid lines, when I carefully trap the moments still within the boundaries of words—it will not appear as romantic as it really is to me: the two of us, finally side by side again at the end of the day. But then, the true value of things very rarely lives just right at the surface.
He still wears the button-down shirt he wore to work, although now the sky blue stripes are bent at angles, rolled into v’s at his elbows. His hands and wrists have pinked in the hot, soapy water at the sink. He looks at me, lifting a sterling pot–I seem to use every one I have when I cook–and smiles as he sets it in the drain board.
“How was your day?” He says, making sincere use of whatever moments we have before someone needs help changing an insulin pod or remembering if they took their pills or brushing those places on their teeth where it still just seems impossible to pull the lips away.
I turn a lid in my hands, rubbing it dry with a cloth. “Hmmm…well,” I begin, my thoughts sliding over the mental list I keep, all the doing it takes to manage a household, and then reluctantly, “It was good, I guess.” Whenever someone asks that question, How was your day, it’s as though that one word – – your – – takes over. I always think first about all the things I’ve yet to do, all that I couldn’t quite get to in the time I had. That one emphasis makes all the details of the day feel like less than they were.
Kevin pushes the washrag over the cutting board, scrubbing away the visible food and with it all the microbial things unseen by the naked eye, and he nods. I smile at his profile, noticing the way the hair over his ears is a little more gray, the way smiling into our lives has etched a few extra lines at the corners of his eyes. I start listing for him all the things I didn’t manage but wish I had, even though those things are never the things he considers significant. “I have so much organizing I need to do,” I say, when suddenly the Spirit grips me and makes me look more closely at how I’m centered.
God has shown me that He wants His children to live His way, for Him, for eternity. He has shown me that knowing about this in the mind and pursuing it in the heart are very different things. He has said that He can do without our empty words, how we say the doctrinally correct things without really ever letting them change how we think.
No, you be transformed by the renewing of your mind, He says. You be a living sacrifice. You dwell in me and I in you, and you let my Spirit bear fruit in you. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness…these are the morsels that will satisfy the multitudes. These are the things on my list. You think on what’s noble and right and pure and lovely and admirable. You say what is beneficial for building another. You come out and be separate. You be mine. You seek my kingdom first. You submit to me in all things, leaning on my understanding instead of your own. You leave the accomplishment to me. You live like you believe in the resurrection, like you know I can redeem, like you recognize that I made you out of clay so that everyone can see the power is mine and not yours. You’ve been crucified with Christ and you no longer live, but He lives in you.
It’s this Word–this sheer conviction of real truth, this revelation of what remains for eternity–that jars me out of my listing, that pulls my focus away from my collection of debits against a day. It’s not God who gathers these lists of earthly failures. These are not the things He considers significant.
Kevin picks up another dirty pot and slides it into the soapy water, and I change course, returning to the drain board to pick up a knife. As though God has dropped scales from my eyes, I am suddenly able to see the day more clearly.
I see that In this one day, God has let me participate in things only He can do. He has allowed me to love, to listen patiently, to encourage, to build, to strengthen, to nourish, to create. He has made art even out of housework. He has filled my frantic hours with Mozart, a sea of notes flowing loud and passionate from my son’s room. He has let me really see the sky, the way the trees move in the wind, the smile on someone’s face. And all day He has given me ears to hear Him right in laughter and birds and little girl chatter. He has allowed me to feed my family and help with homework. I have watched him give my son words and use my daughters to make other people feel noticed and loved. I see that His living through accomplishes what will last. He gathers, reaches, multiplies, touches, heals, redeems, teaches. He keeps His promises. He shows up. He blesses. And this He shows me in bold strokes, reframing my perspective just that quickly, as I lift another clean dish from the rack and swaddle it in the towel I hold in my hands.
How was your day.
I suddenly realize that the emphasis itself is all wrong. The question, like so many others is grammatically impaired, the words limiting. The truth is, it is not my day at all. It’s always Hisday. He says, This is the day I have made. Rejoice and be glad in it.”
All my subtraction, my debits, my minimizing of the truly lasting fruit must cease in favor of the way He sees.
“Why do we always do that?” The words tumble out and sit there, with the dish I have just placed on the counter in front of me. “Why is it that we evaluate the day on the basis of what’s temporary?”
Kevin smiles at me, listening. He is used to my passion and the way God changes me right in the middle of a sentence.
And so it is that I look at this man I love and find the question He really asks, the value sometimes hidden beneath the solid black lines of human words. I start again, listing the real moments God redeemed, the multiplying I saw, the fruit I tasted. Because the truth is, it is always God’s day. It is what He makes it to be, and I am His within it. And because I am His, I do and see and say and hear things that will last, and the things He accomplishes are good.
