meaningful work
Home from wrestling the road and picking up my young adults, I take up the work where I left off, affixing congratulatory labels to some cookie bags I’m assembling for the kids who will transition out of our children’s worship group to another grade level this Sunday. The bundles are love and sweet and joy, and as I curl ribbon, I hope the savor of flavor will spread the goodness of God through young bodies.
In my peripheral vision, I catch sight of Riley standing close on my left side, hands folded neatly in front of her in a posture she reserves for waiting, and to be honest, I feel mildly annoyed. She will stand that way, still and quiet and watching, watching, watching, until I dismiss or engage her. You would think she was a servant.
As soon as I think it, I know: She is a servant.
Riley is, in her heart, so naturally a servant she doesn’t have to try to be one, and her posture now is a spiritual practice for waiting–come close; be still; fold your hands; watch.
“Do you need something?” I ask her, knowing before I even finish the sentence that it’s all wrong. Rarely does Riley wait because she needs something. She waits for connection, for interaction, for relationship, for guidance, and why I suddenly wonder, do I, the one of us without Autism, usually wait for outcomes, keeping myself busy to avoid a wretched pause in purpose? In seasons of waiting to be called to work, I so often forget that the relationship is the purpose.
“Um, Mom Jones, can I help you with anything?” She asks, not quite addressing my question, but getting right to the point, watching, still watching, while I affix a label to a little bag of cookies.
I’m tempted to say no. I can finish the job faster on my own, actually in a matter of minutes, but I can feel her wanting to help, and I can feel the Spirit reminding me that it would also be easier for God to accomplish His will without letting me participate. I feel Him reminding me that relationship is everything and everything is relationship, and that it’s more about relationship than it is about the task in front of me. The cookies, the bags with their curled ribbon, the labels that say with love, all these communicate from a relationship that far exceeds these things. Riley understands this far better than I. It is the relationship with me that makes her wait and watch, and it is the relationship with the kids, it’s giving away love to the kids, that makes her want to help.
“Sure, you can help if you like,” I say and smile into her watching eyes, and Riley, immediately enthused, takes up her place beside me and begins to peel a printed label from the sheet in front of me.
She loves this, I’m thinking, watching her giddy-absorbed in the giving of love, the giving of gifts, her fingers careful as she positions the label just so and smooths it gently with her fingers. She chooses every single person and not just the persons who choose her, and what is that if not the love of Christ?
“Mom Jones, who texted you when we got home, when you walked in the door?” She asks this conversationally, pressing another label down with her thumbs. I don’t always welcome these kinds of questions, but again I pause, knowing that for Riley this is less about nosing around in my business than it is about wanting the kind of relationship with me that moves me to share openly with her.
“It was from one of the teachers at school,” I say, meaning Adam’s school, because it’s Teacher Appreciation Week and I had sent all the teachers texts this morning to say thank you, thinking as I did it about something God showed me not even a week before, that giving thanks is itself a position of purpose. I had been reading 1 Chronicles, about the men that David appointed to give thanks and thinking about how giving thanks is a work of joy, but also, at least in this world, a position of obscurity. I had understood then that God still appoints people as heralds of grace and givers of thanks and bringers of praise.
“I’m planning to do that too,” Riley says, leaking a little joy, not looking up from the package of cookies in front of her and the next label she has begun to peel, just carefully with the edge of her fingernail, from the sheet. “When we finish.”
We had prayed for a while for Riley to find meaningful work, still pray for it for Riley and Josh and Adam all the time, but it had not occurred to me until just this moment that Riley’s most meaningful work will always be this, the giving of love. For years we’ve known: If there is a chance to love someone, Riley will wait for it. For this she practices a thousand times– come close; be still; fold your hands; watch.
And God has been adamant with me about this, has lately written it deep on my heart, that what He calls meaningful work is much higher than anything we half-blind humans would ever call a legitimate job, because we’ll never get paid here on earth for doing it. So, I can ask for a good, paying job here and now for our young adults, and I can ask Him for meaningful work, and God may well define those two things a bit differently. I’m just beginning to really learn what it means that His ways and His thoughts are higher, that He has demonstrated a different kind of economy, that I should be careful with my human perspective.
“You’re sending thank you texts to the teachers?” I ask, because I can’t quite wrap my mind around the truth, that she already has her meaningful work and feels more confident about it than any other work she gets to do.
“Yeah,” she says, nodding a little as she reaches for another cookie bag. And is that a bit of incredulity I hear in her tone in response, a bit of “now, just why wouldn’t I”?
“Huh,” I say, remembering suddenly that I am also supposed to be affixing labels to the cookie bags myself, turning again toward the task. “Well, that’s really cool, Riley.”
