I’ve heard the whispers.
The rumblings.
The women who pull me aside to share with shy and embarrassed eyes this worry that what you do doesn’t count because you do it at 2am when no one is looking except the baby who’s throwing up. Again.
Or because what you do doesn’t require a passport.
Or because you think you need a stage or a podium for your voice to matter or make a difference.
Sister, don’t tell me you don’t make a difference. Don’t tell me that your life is small; that the sun sets and rises on the same day in and day out and that you don’t make a difference.
I don’t want to hear that.
Don’t tell me that pulpits are only found in churches and speeches only come from stages. Don’t tell me that microphones are necessary to be heard.
Don’t for a second succumb to the bald-faced lie whispered sneaky sneaky sometimes only inside of our own heads that ministry begins and ends with serious theology instead of Cheerios-encrusted carpets.
Don’t tell me that Cheerios, diapers, laundry, and dishes aren’t serious theology.
Don’t tell me that Gospel doesn’t sound like a working mother who rises while it is still dark to provide for her family.
I don’t believe that we are playing make-believe when we dress-up our daughters in all the courage and conviction to last a lifetime of love stories found first, middle, and last in the pages of the only good book that ever mattered.
Don’t tell me that all the hours sown into sons between soccer practice and football matches, between trouble-makers and nay-sayers, doubters, pouters and bullies isn’t wild obedience; heartbreaking missions.
Don’t tell me that you aren’t in ministry.
Don’t for a single second think it somehow takes a passport to save lives.
Don’t tell me that holy dirt beneath the fingernails doesn’t look like blog posts, carpool, science projects, teaching Sunday school. Don’t put a box around your calling, your seven days a week of holy Sundays breaking the bread and spilling the bloody sweat of serving out the determination to like your kids and not just love them right there in the discount aisle of the local grocery store.
To mother them and not just to maintain them.
To offer your life, your foolishness, your lessons learned and failed –so many broken bits and pieces of sustenance for your sisters who do this daily holy collecting of manna waking up every Monday to ask God all over again what is it?
What is it that makes sense of our sleepless nights and our long days?
What is it that keeps us getting up again and again and again for that one last glass of water that never ends over and over year and year in and out again?
What is it that makes us think we can make it through another baby, another round of awkward questions from strangers, another daycare drop off, another night of feeling like we left half of the day undone?
Don’t tell me you need a platform to be seen when there are sets of tiny eyes looking right back at you.
Don’t measure your meaning in stats; don’t count your contribution with your calculator.
Because God has already credited our faith as righteousness. Me in the bathrobe at midnight with the undone dishes and raging fiery passion to encourage mothers who are too often, too terribly, too embarrassedly convinced that they don’t count.
You with the patience and the paste that keeps gluing your family back together again.
Don’t tell me we can’t leave the back door open for that misunderstood word, “ministry,” to come quietly in.
Along with the neighbor’s kids.
All the dirt in the back yard.
And Jesus.
