when we say thank you

Over lunch, we talk of how we first imagined ourselves as mothers, smiling down at our fingers.

I’ve always longed to be the Proverbs 31 woman.  She is clothed with strength and dignity, Word says.  She can laugh at the days to come.  I don’t know, but somehow the unmanicured edges of my fingernails seem like a comment on the situation.

“I was forever collecting ideas about how I would be amazing,”  I tell my friend, my sister, “and now I just pin things on Pinterest.”  We both laugh, reaching for each other across the table. “I love Pinterest,” I confess to her.  “It’s this glowing treasure trove—this wealth of beautifully photographed ideas about how you can do anything if you can just find the time.”

For a while, we trade stories about the little things, the things we still try to do to swaddle our children’s lives, the ways we channel the deep love that once cradled their necks and moved our thumbs gently over their baby feet.  My friend and I share a life stage, a lot of common perspective.  Our children grow taller every day and stay awake later.  The conversations we have with them often dig deep.  They like to watch TV shows with us and share the blankets thrown over our feet.  We both know that time runs short.

So, we tuck notes into their lunch boxes sometimes—and we laugh because it’s a far cry from the photographs I’ve seen on Pinterest of vegetables, fruit, and lunch meat cut and arranged to look like zoo animals and sea creatures.  “I actually saw a hotdog made to look like an octypus,” I tell her, remembering.  “Does anyone actually have time for that?” I ask it wishing I did.  The details matter to me.  I want my children to see my love for them everywhere they look.

But I still haven’t finished packing away clothes from the colder seasons.  On the floor of the guest room I have collected boxes to fill with the last of my winter decorations.  In my office, stacks of Bible study books circle my chair, and a pile of papers on the corner of my desk waits to be filed, and a drawer crinkles when I open it with receipts that I need to record.  Laundry always waits, and dinner—hot for them at the right time.  And I want to sit with my girls and just talk while we nibble on cookies and cradle mugs in our hands.  And I stop every chance I get to hug my son and feel the angles of his broadening shoulders and lift his chin with my finger so he’ll talk to me and let me glimpse the thoughts filling up his brilliant mind, making those blue eyes shine.

So, I have to settle for the simple ways:  a favorite scripture wrapped around a sandwich I made for them, clean sheets pulled tight when they’ve run out of time to make the bed, a little help reorganizing the dresser drawer.  I ask them for requests for supper, and I put down whatever fills my hands when they come to me needing to be touched, asking to be heard.  I draw butterflies and fields of flowers on the board where I write the schedule everyday, because I know a schedule is love to the two—the ones with autism—while the other one needs reminders of things free and vivid and sweet.

I leave lunch with my friend still mulling over the conversation—the mom I am, the one I hope to be.

Most of the time, my children don’t say a lot about the little things, tiny reminders of love they’ve grown accustomed to expect.  But they laugh and they smile and their eyes dance, and they sit more on top of me than next to me.  It’s true that where ever I am, they seem happy to be there too, and for me, that’s enough.  It’s enough that they reach for me, that they want to tell me things, that mine are the arms they seek when life just hurts.

Loving me makes them want to give me things:  a vase of flowers they cut from the yard; a piece of artwork they sat to make; a bit of their time and effort surrendered to help me dry dishes.  But I think of Proverbs 31, and it’s that part about her children arise and call her blessed that I love most.  I don’t expect a thank you for things I want to do, for the little things that feel like love dripping from my fingers, but when they notice…oh, that’s life’s richness.  Their attention to these things I do, their notice, their thank you’s feel like a jewel studded robe wrapped about my shoulders.

And these days, I see that this is the way with God too.

He wants me to see His love for me everywhere I look.  Just in this room I see hundreds of little things just for me:  a photograph of my children with gold Summer sun lighting the tops of their heads; a new journal, pages blank with possibility; a candle–fragrant and flickering; a tree full of butterfly ornaments—a gift from a dear friend reminding me of redemption; a stack of books I read on a beach vacation with Kevin, some of the words soaked up into my heart; the box Riley and I wrapped in pretty paper for a project; a wall sign–just walk a day in my flipflops—my mom found for my Christmas stocking.  More than the things, it’s what they mean.  I could list these for hours, the sweet love dripping from God’s fingers, the ways He still tenderly cradles my neck in His hands.  No matter the day, He still does things to swaddle me, to gather me up in His arms, to show me He always has time to love me.  He cares about the details.

But it’s not just true for me.  It’s true for you too.  This love He offers has height and depth and reach that it takes power to understand (Ephesians 3:18).

I don’t want to miss the touches of His fingers all over my living.  So, I ask Him for eyes that see.  I ask Him to teach me to notice, to tighten the lens on my days, to see more than the hard edges.  I keep lists of His gifts, inspired to do so by a Spirit-written book.

The listing of His gifts makes me want to sit more on top of Him than next to Him.  Where ever He is, I’m happy to be there too.  His are the arms I seek when life just hurts.  Loving Him makes me want to give Him everything–the things I gather close, the things I make with my hands, my time and effort surrendered to do things with Him.

And I have to think that when I notice all these thousands of things He does to love me, when I stop to say thank you, surely those are the offerings that taste the sweetest of all.

Surely our gratitude glows, like treasures heaped at His feet.