only lies
Weary fingers, mine, and tangled in her hair, weaving, weaving, weaving the wet strands in thick ropes down her back. For at least fifteen minutes every day, Riley and I become the reflection of generations of others before us–their angled arms, their busy fingers, their bodies bending, tending. Riley, still and waiting, tilts her face toward me, and I reach down to touch her, gently entwining my hands. Jesus spoke of unity with God this way, like a melting. “…you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us (John 17:21).” My children never really stop being part of me.
The sun slowly drops and food simmers and in gentle, subtle sweeps and tugs, my fingers build. The Kingdom comes–not mine, God’s–in unassuming moments like this one. I look down at my hands, the tangled veins, the knobby knuckles moving by memory. It’s simple: I’ve surrendered the last of what I have and it looks to me like nothing at all, like five loaves and two fish meant to feed a multitude. And then I try to remember: These hands are not my own; I have given them. These hands do more just now than I imagine. But I admit: Most of the time I think I’m only braiding hair, and I wonder if that little repeated thing even makes a bit of difference. It’s been this way for years, maybe every single year, maybe every single day of mothering. I think I’m only braiding or only cooking or only praying. Always only, only, only and just.
I talked to a young mom today on Zoom, in the morning, while I was still confused about how much of living I do on my own. Freshness confuses things like a fog, but by the afternoon, I know the truth. My friend’s baby son gurgled sweet on the floor in front of her, just out of reach of the camera except that she turned it so I could see his fat cheeks, that new downy head. She spoke of her life now, pausing every so often to answer his baby coos. “Yes, I know,” she said to him, in that tender mama voice, with those glancing eyes that speak of love. “I’m not really doing much now,” she said to me, while reaching to touch him, her body crooked over. Even fresh in the morning, I wanted to tell her we don’t know how much God does with our not much. The words were not my own. She continued on, spoke of only praying and only singing and only feeding and only holding and only reading to her son, pushing stray hair back out of her face. She said, “I’d like to do more, but I just can’t quite figure out how to fit it in right now. Maybe eventually, I can,” she said, scanning her mind for a time when she could take on something else. She left the last words open-ended, and they dangled, breathless. Even though it takes me all day every day to learn the same lesson again, I have begun to remember, and the memory made me want to tell her to tie up those hanging threads so things won’t unravel.
I wanted to tell her that only lies.
“But you see,” I told her, “you are doing more than you think. God is doing more.”
I remember that conversation now, staring at my end-of-the-day hands, smoothing strands. Silently, I begin to pray over Riley’s head. My lips move with my fingers. I am a child and she is my child. As I am in you, may she be in us. I give God my hands, and He moves, weaving, weaving, weaving her wet hair in thick ropes down her back, and beneath me, she giggles. In the silence, her joy sings, rolling through the afternoon like the wind.
“What are you laughing about?” I ask, and my own voice sounds lighter somehow, carried on by her cheer.
“I’m laughing because you’re braiding my hair,” she says, as if this is obvious and expected, and how could I not understand? “When you braid my hair, it makes me happy.”
When you touch me, God, I am happy.
I smile down at Riley’s head, my eyes traveling the zigzagging line of her part, the bumpy hills of her braids. The Kingdom comes. And all over again, God takes my meager only and makes it more than enough.
