how i nurture my mothering spirit – roxane

The Healing Powers of the Pot Roast

In the early part of November 2012, I experienced a profound moment of healing by spoon.

It functioned like salve on my weary mother’s soul – a bowl of pot roast made by my sweet mother-in-law.

She’d prepared the roast and its accompanying vegetables in her Crockpot the night before, the overnight simmering of soup and juices from the meat producing a scrumptious gravy that would have had world-class chefs swooning.

While the rest of my family was occupied in other spaces – the youngest of them splashing in a nearby hotel pool – I’d found a moment to steal away into the quiet of our dining room to eat what was left of the roast, most of which had been nearly completely devoured earlier by hungry men.

Sitting in the dimly-lit room, breathing deeply, slowly now, I prepared to consume the first homemade meal I’d had in months.

Comfort food, they call it, and this moment made it true for me. With each delectable bite, restoration was beginning.

For nearly a year I’d been trying to do the impossible, working outside the home with five kids still needing so much more of me than I could offer with my attention elsewhere.

But now, after weeks of discernment, I’d made the difficult decision to resign from what had seemed, by all accounts, my dream job. It would mean giving up a paycheck that had lightened our financial load but brought extra responsibilities that weighed down my heart, causing my middle child to utter one day, “You’re not a being a mom anymore.”

I’d done what I could to rearrange the pieces of my life to accommodate all, but came up short. The emotional, spiritual and even physical effects were manifesting themselves, and I had to ask myself whether the job was worth risking an illness that could remove me from life altogether.

Ironically, the kitchen, which I consider the heart of the home, was a room I avoided like the plague during that year. I knew that if I entered, I wouldn’t make it out without depleting the extra energy I needed to push through my busy days.

Fast food had become normal; my oven, a neglected appliance. The dining room was a place to linger only as long as was necessary to gulp down a slice of pizza or a burger.

But sitting before that bowl of real food made with loving hands, placed gently in a warmer and transported 120 miles to our home earlier that day, had reintroduced me to the place where my heart longed most to be.

A few days after leaving the job, I prepared my own slow-cooked meal, and as I scooped out portions to each family member, a surge of love and joy took hold. I was ready now to feed my family, both in food and through my presence in ways that had not been possible for far too long.

And in the midst of it, I became aware that if not for that wonderfully nourishing meal several weeks earlier, the moment would have passed unappreciated. In that gift of warm sustenance, I’d been given a poignant reminder that we cannot offer others something we haven’t first taken in ourselves.

In doing whatever is necessary to create space in our days to ensure we’re nourished, we’ll have something to offer back those we love. And they, in turn, will give to others when it’s time.

A potato, a carrot, a tender chunk of meat – the healing powers of the pot roast.

A bowl full of love that wooed me back to life.

. . .

Roxane Salonen lives in Fargo, N.D., with her husband and five children, ages seven to 17. A church cantor, book reader and coffee drinker, she also works as a faith columnist and features writer for her city’s daily newspaper.

Roxane is the author of two children’s picture books – First Salmon and P is for Peace Garden: A North Dakota Alphabet. Find her pondering on “faith, family and following the muse” at Peace Garden Mama: roxanesalonen.blogspot.com/

God of the gathering

How often have I desired to gather your children together

as a hen gathers her brood under her wings…

Matthew 13:37

Of course I love the days when they come back.
When dark drive floods with headlights,
tired travelers droop to baggage claim
and I leap up to greet them
bright-eyed, arms as wide as grin.
Soft tears springing right behind: You’re home!
I reach to pull them near and laugh
a muffled welcome into collars,
fall into the hug I’ve held in dreams,
remembering panged when phone would ring
from far away, quick update between worlds
and then goodbye, talk soon, take care –
empty that gnaws and grows
each time they leave.

When they were young, my wings
arched wide enough to hold them,
stretch around their needs, protect, provide,
make home.
But then they grew. I wanted
them to scurry off and run into the world
just as I hoped. And yet 
I never thought they’d drift so far.

Years went by when they did not return,
work or duty called, and travel hassles
at the holidays. I know
it’s life, I understand.
Still, one big brood under my roof is best:
Clucking, ruffling feathers (family after all)
the way I always dream.
Warmth of close reminding
love resides in flesh and bone.

Gathering is work. You’d never guess
the squeezing of the schedule
to make time and space for cooking, cleaning, 
organizing and awaiting, readying return.
And stretching of the heart, too 
wide enough to let back in.

Last night as I tucked blankets
into corners, smoothed the sheets for
now-guests in their childhood beds,
I thought of birds who pluck their feathers
to line soft their babies’ nest.
Always it is myself I give
to draw them home,
my loves that wander wide
then circle back to tell me
wisdom of the world
I’ve always known.

God of the baking

And again he said, “To what should I compare the kingdom of God? It is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.”

Luke 13:20-21

Here’s why I love to bake:
You start with nothing –
an idea, ingredients
of possibility, a plan and hope.
You slowly start to mix
measure and pour,
the transformation stirring with your spoon.
And suddenly it starts to look
and smell and taste alive –
creation sticky in my hands,
smeared between my fingers,
streaked across my hair.

The baker’s art takes patience,
planning, careful watch of
oven’s heat, directions’ time.
Forgiveness, too –
for cake that falls, deflated;
recipes that failed to rise.

Baking’s best as company affair:
Sometimes I cook with children –
grabbing cups and spoons to spill,
enthusiasm trumped only by sugar.
I sit and watch the wise work, too –
laughing, telling stories while they bake
with wrinkled hands,
forearms strong from years of kneading dough.

I ought to say that sharing is the best part –
breaking loaf and offering steaming slice in love.
But secretly I like to chew in silence:
taste alone the crunch of crust,
sink of teeth in softer middle’s heart.
Because creation’s sweetest in still morning
before the rest wake round me
greeting day with yawn and groan.
I love to feed their bellies,
but I need to rise alone.

God of the dishes

Wash away all my guilt; from my sin cleanse me.

Cleanse me with hyssop, that I may be pure;

wash me, make me whiter than snow.

A clean heart create for me, God; renew in me a steadfast spirit.

Psalm 51: 4, 9, 12

Dirty dishes stacked so high,
porcelain towers on my right and left.
I take the sponge in hand,
wring out the water, squeeze on soap,
and crank the faucet hot.
Steam rises as the stream heats, steady
I plunge plates and cups
into the bubbles swirled below.
Swish, wash, rinse, repeat;
the stack grows smaller as I go,
plates now neat and nestled
drying silent in the rack.
My hands turn pink and bright in sink's hot bath;
my fingers pruned and white by end of night.

Long ago I ate alone:
the solitary rinse of single
spoon and knife and fork.
These days I’m elbow deep in pans,
scrubbing steel pots ringed
thick with soup, browned casseroles
of dinners passed with family, friends
all those who gather for my meals.

Cynics see the stubborn cycle
of the grimy, gooey junk
caked hard on dishes left to sit too long
(pardon my love of lingering one last glass)
as dirty proof of life’s depressing rut:
the endless drag of meals and mouths to feed,
a plate’s only escape the break
that sends it swiftly to the bin.

But I delight in dishes,
love the dirty and the clean:
how they slide in slippery hands
before I scrub in circles swift,
how they flash with water’s drip
each time I lift them up to rise,
inspecting both sides slick and sheen,
then dry them satisfied.

For dishes prove that someone shared the meal,
that there was food to pass,
safe time to spare.
Companions, plenty and a pause
are no small good
in world of loneliness, 
want, rush and fear.
And if I'd none to wash,
that would mean no one took the cup.
What a tidy, terrible mistake
that empty would have been.

God of the sweeping

Or what woman having ten coins and losing one would not light a lamp and sweep the house, searching carefully until she finds it? And when she does find it, she calls together her friends and neighbors and says to them, “Rejoice with me because I have found the coin that I lost.” In just the same way, I tell you, there will be rejoicing among the angels of God over one sinner who repents.

Luke 15: 8-10

Every night I take the broom in hand,
both of us worn and tired
but still working.
As I stretch out arms
to reach the bristles’ brush,
the steady rhythm comes back easy,
drag of dirt across familiar floor.

Every day it slides the same:
crumbs, hair, dust, food 
all piled into tidy heaps
left waiting for the bin.
One swift dump, then goodbye.
But making clean is holy work –
refreshing for another day,
forgiving what is past and gone.
To gather, to release 
and then repeat
makes way, always
for one day more.

I know the time it takes,
the pattern of the pulling
corners into center,
how to turn and switch
the broom’s direction when the grit is stubborn.
Sometimes I even do my sweeping in the dark
when all the world’s asleep.

Only when I lose the precious
slipped under couch,
rolled into corner dark
or simply disappeared –
then only do I blaze the lights,
look steady as I clean, search
focused on the finding,
knowing work that will not fail.

But if I did not sweep each day,
memorize these floors,
their stains and scuffs,
then I could not seek what’s lost
when it’s the coin that matters most.
So thus it was and always must it be:
pull creaky closet door to find old broom,
swish brush, brush swish
reach pull, pull reach
and then again to rest.

God at work (and the rest of us, too)

Growing up, I never imagined God sweeping.

Or baking. Or gardening. Or helping deliver a baby.

For the past few months I’ve been writing a new program on work and calling for small groups in congregations. Since we keep learning that people’s challenges with vocation often stem from a lack of understanding about how God calls, I’ve been weaving in lots of Scriptural passages that broaden our image of who God is. So lately I’ve been living and working closely with God as worker: farmer, potter, metalworker, baker and midwife, to name a few. 

These biblical images of God at work are so rich and so relevant that I’m amazed to realize how easily we skip over them, so stuck is the white-bearded Father in flowing robes in our minds and in our churches.

Had it not been for graduate studies in theology, I might have missed many of these facets of Scripture’s portrait of God, too. I grew up with loving images of God – a tender shepherd, a caring father – but no one told me till I was much older that Scripture held more pictures of the divine than what I saw in my children’s Bible or the stained glass windows at church.

I love these images now: God as artist, molding us like clay. God as blacksmith, forging us in fire. God as gardener, planting and watering and waiting to harvest.

These are images of God that fire my imagination and make me believe differently – with depth, with creativity, with fresh eyes.

So now that I’m nearing the end of this writing project, I want to explore in a new way what I’ve learned and loved about these images of God at work. Especially as we begin bustling around the house, hurrying into the holidays, preparing for guests and feasts, I want to slow down and ponder images of God we often overlook.

The domestic ones. The feminine ones. The everyday ones.  

(And because I’m mentally preparing for Advent, my favorite season of the year for soaking in poems and psalms, I’m inching out on a limb and playing with poetry in this space, too.)

So till tomorrow, I’ll borrow a line from Lake Wobegon country:

Be well and do good work.

ordinary time

It was an ordinary moment, during an ordinary day, in an ordinary week.

(Which, in the midst of life with littles, means complete chaos.)

Ordinary is never boring, never dragging these days. Our ordinary is unexpected, our mundane is a mess.

With each new dawn, schedules get shifted and plans get changed. One boy rises early, the other sleeps late; one naps like a dream, one wrestles like a nightmare; one gobbles three plates, the other shoves the spoon away. The next day they switch roles and everything changes again. Never a dull moment.

It was one of these everyday-crazy moments that I paused, my attention caught by turning leaves on the tree near our window, flashing orange in afternoon sun. Ordinary, I thought, such an ordinary day.

Even in the midst of mania – one child spilling CDs from the cabinet, the other pulling paints from a drawer – my thoughts tended theological, as they often do.

I thought about ordinary time, where the church spends most of its year. I thought about all of Jesus’ ordinary time, the years before his public ministry. So much of what matters is ordinary – the regular season, the everyday work.

In a season of life when so much seems ordinary, preparation for what’s ahead or maintenance of what’s right now, I sometimes think about all the ordinary years that Jesus spent. Scripture goes silent on the subject; the Gospels skip from twelve-in-the-temple to thirty-in-the-desert in the flip of a page. But those long lost years must have held quiet growth, careful learning, hard work, cultivated relationships, deep prayer. It made all the difference how Jesus lived his ordinary years.

So many days I dream, amidst the cries and chaos, about the years to come. When the house is finished. When my kids are in school. When I have more time to write. I often wrestle with the waiting, the reality of so much ordinary stretching out in front of me.

But when I stop, seized by an extraordinary ordinary like autumn leaves in October sun, I realize how much God must love ordinary. Because all of life is wrapped around it.

The sacred ordinary of every day.

the house is a mess; come on in

Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof…

Christ, I’d be impressed if you made it past the driveway.

Cracks lined with weeds. Untrimmed hedges. A half-mowed lawn. Plastic children’s toys abandoned to bleach in the sun in that tacky way I swore I’d never let happen in my yard.

And if you did brave the front door, what would you greet you in the entry as you wiped your sandals on the mat?

A towering stack of unpacked boxes. (Yes, we moved in four months ago.) Two heaping laundry baskets, unsorted and unwashed. Three abandoned, unmatched shoes. Four weeks’ worth of Sunday papers, unread and unrecycled.

And me, standing sheepishly to the side, always apologizing for what’s undone.

…but only say the word and my soul shall be healed.

Help me to breathe into what’s most important – that we who live here care about things like words and soul and healing.

Remind me that I’m called to keep up with Jesus, not the Joneses. That my work is to make a home, not a house. A home that will always be more messy than magazine.

Help me to see people unfolding and not projects undone. Help me to set aside ego and externals and endless to-do lists. Help me to embrace humility always and hospitality anyway. Help me to make a Christ room in my house and my heart.

And especially this week, as my partner in parenting leaves home to work on the other side of the globe, this week when all the child care and cooking and cleaning are left to me, help my work to be full of word and soul and healing. Full of you.

You, Lord, whose home was always full of people interrupting your work (even ripping off your roof to get inside),

who got exasperated with your family at times (and even lost your temper),

who understood how tempting it would always be for the world to seduce (and not the Word to sink in),

help me to seek and find you here. At home.

With dirty dishes in the sink and dog hair on the couch and Duplos all over the floor.

a real labor day

Today I’m doing laundry.

I’m shuttling to preschool. I’m catching up on email. I’m nursing the baby. I’m picking tomatoes. I’m prepping for a meeting. I’m paying bills. I’m writing.

I’m changing wet sheets, scrubbing oatmeal-smeared faces, washing grubby hands, loading the dishwasher, cleaning up after the dog. Reading and sweeping and meal planning and filing and cooking and researching and driving and washing.

I’m working.

Yesterday was a sweet goodbye to summer. All of us home together all day, morning lazy in our pajamas, then romping round the playground, up and down and around the Big Slides. Lunch and laughter and long naps. Afternoon projects we never get time to tackle, cooking fresh from the garden, homegrown soup and tomato sauce in big pots to freeze, everyone stealing green beans from the biggest bowl, snapping as we snack.

After the babes were asleep, the humid night air curling their newly-cut hair into sweaty ringlets, I cranked open all the windows and let the evening breeze slip inside. The scent of a neighbor’s bonfire filled the house with the savory smoke of smoldering wood.

Yesterday was no work at all.

Labor Day is easy, when we’re lucky to have work that lets us play. Family cookouts and dripping watermelon and melting ice cream sandwiches and sweaty feet dipped in the cool water and lazy fishing in the lake shade and the only pesky fly those traffic lines snaking home from the cabin. But it’s not a day of labor; it’s a day of rest. Even diapers and dishes feel different on a day off.

It’s the next day – the alarm clock and the baby up before and the endless to-do list and the unwashed dishes and the extra load of laundry and the heap of emails and the errands all over town – that’s the labor.

But even with all its demands and annoyances and stresses and dirty work, that’s the gift. The work itself. The children to raise and the job to do well and the home to make and the garden to tend.

Today, tomorrow, endless stretching out in front of me – it’s all labor days. I want to live them mindfully, with some trace of sweet summer saying goodbye: grateful, hopeful, present. To see God’s fingerprints smudged all over, not just the days-off that delight, but the days-on that demand. The leisure and the labor.

The gift to have work, in all corners, from all directions, on all days, that pulls my energy forth. And pulls my love towards others.

a (new) room with a view

Today is my first day working in my new office.

One of the features of our new house that delighted me was a bright, spacious room for an office on the main floor. I’ve been working from home for years, but tucked away in a corner of the basement guest room. Or squeezed onto a sofa amidst piles of laundry. So the idea of a Real Live Office – with the big writing desk and all my books gathered together and windows that gaze out on green trees and blue sky – is a dream come true.

Of course, the books are still in boxes on the floor, and the writing desk is currently piled with photo albums, and the view out the windows is shrinking daily due to spindly weeds winding their way skyward. But the hope of a room with a view - a room of my own, a room for my work – still quickens my heart.

In the years that I’ve been working from home, juggling parenting and paid work, I’ve learned the importance of claiming a space for myself. No matter how cramped it was, that corner of the guest room was mine. Aside from the occasional spin in the office chair, no kids were allowed. I needed space to read and write and think, separate from my world of mothering.

Looking back now, I understand why my own mother needed her den downstairs, her space apart. As a family grows and spreads to every corner of the house, it’s important for a parent whose days are spent primarily at home to carve out a sanctuary. Whether a corner for crafting, a nook for reading, a desk for the computer or a basement for the treadmill, spaces all our own are essential. I find that my breath slows, my shoulders sink and my whole body relaxes into a room free from toys and chores and to-do lists.

Many wise women have written about the need of a room of one’s own. But for me it has been one of those truths I had to learn by living – that inner life needs outer space to flourish. The deepest work of my heart desires a physical place to call home. It doesn’t need to be grand or glamorous; it simply needs to be set apart.

Ironically, the one feature my office currently lacks is a door. (I’m hoping my handy husband will remedy that by year’s end.) So whenever our sitter is here, I’m still tucked away working in the corner of a bedroom. But even on afternoons like this one, when I only got to steal a few minutes while the babies were napping, time and space away recenters my soul.

A bit of good work gets done here; nothing life-changing, nothing flashy. But bit by bit, I find myself through this work and these words. Mothering’s daily dervish – whirling, twirling, swirling – leaves me exhausted if I don’t pause to ponder. Spending time away from my wee ones, even when it’s under the same roof, is a spiritual practice of parenting I’ve come to cherish.

And this room with a view gives me a fresh perspective – a longer, wider, sometimes sunnier view – on life outside its walls.