Mama's helpers

The question comes this morning, as my husband's truck barrels east up the road, into the rising sun, and I sink into my chair at the table and open the devotional I'm reading with a sigh.  

“Why do you love me, Mama?”

Leave it to Marie to ask the hard questions.  This gamine little girl, crazy red curls in her face, she doesn’t simply ask, “Do you love me?” but “Why?”  And then she sits there in her striped pjs, the ones B.J. calls “the convict jammies,” mashing a banana peel into the breakfast table.

“Because God gave you to me to love, Marie, that’s why.  Do you love me?”

“Yep.”

“Why?”

“‘Cause.”  

She steers the other half of the banana peel in an arc above her bowl like a speed boat.  I watch her as I take a bite of oatmeal.

“You’re my helper, Baby Girls,” I say, but even as I say the word “helper,” I cringe.

You see, it was grocery day Tuesday.  My big beginning-of-the-month, stock-up-for-a-month trip.   It's a chore, the shopping bit, with multiple small children and a pacifier left at home.  We even break halfway through Wal-Mart, choosing the check-out line with the broken conveyor belt, of course - and while I am sliding our items one by one to the cashier with spiky hair, Marie, the hard-questions girl, queries (really loudly), "Mom, is this lady a guy?" (Sigh).  We head to the van to eat turkey sandwiches and regroup before slipping back in the other door, and as we march back in, I wonder if there’s a man slouched in the back of store in front of a row of security screens, shaking his head at this harried woman who’s back so soon for more.  By the time we are finished, Nathan is slouched in his seat, nearly asleep, I’ve long quit telling Marie to stop picking her nose, and where is Willem?  When the second cashier greets us by commenting, “Look at all of Mama’s helpers!” my reply is a sarcastic one: “That depends on your definition of the word “helper.”

            And today we're baking pumpkin cake rolls and there's laundry, and beds to make yet, and Shadow wagging at me through the kitchen window, begging to be fed, and it’s nearly lunchtime.  With three helpers, pumpkin cake rolls take three times the amount of time, and we end with three times the mess...

           But in the middle of all this, I can’t shake Marie’s question.

            “Why do you love me, Mama?”

            Because, honey, you're my helper, the iron on which the Lord sharpens me when I’ve become dull and distracted (Proverbs 27:17).  One who provokes me to love and good deeds (Hebrews 10:24), who requires of me that I follow in a puny way the example of my Lord, setting aside myself for the sake of another.  He’s freed me in principle from the law of sin, you see, and He uses you, in your convict pjs, to free me day by day in practice.  To give me opportunity to wield myself as an instrument of righteousness (Romans 6).  To be patient.  To love.  To obey (Him) with a happy heart.

           And why does He love me?  I’m no helper.  That...that is all grace (Ephesians 2:8-10).

            And as we roll up pumpkin cakes in a cloud of powdered sugar, I pray for the grace that I need to see Him refining me, sharpening me, employing even these little ones to cause me to walk in the good works which He has before ordained, that I should walk in them.

            And who are your helpers?