Blessed are the Meek, for They Shall Inherit the Earth

(It seems odd to post on Christmas Eve the joyous return of our steam vacuum cleaner, but I am a housewife. My path to holiness is a humble one, indeed.)

Last Christmas, my mother-in-law, the fastidious cleaner who was raised by hotel managers, answered my husband’s wish list by sending us a Bissell Pro-Heat Steam Cleaner. It was an unusual Christmas gift, much less one for a son.

Anyone who has attempted to raise many young children with an elderly dog in a small apartment with wall-to-wall beige carpeting can understand our wish. With every knocked over cup of coffee, every mud splatter or unmentionable “accident” our large apartment deposit was on the line. I’d banned the grape juice and enforced the “no shoes in the house rule.” Banning tea, coffee and grape jelly in the beige carpeted dining room seemed cruel. I spent hours spot cleaning with Resolve carpet cleaner. We rented vacuums from Safeway that cost over $100 per use. When were we just going to bite the bullet and shell out $250 for a Steam Cleaner? That’s when Grandma Benjamin decided to come to the rescue.

Within days I, the ever skeptical one who enjoys frivolous Christmas presents like books, was an enthusiastic convert. What a pleasure it is to clean when one has the right tools! Suddenly, spilled drinks weren’t such a big deal. It was much easier to keep perspective & practice meekness when the messy spills disappeared in seconds.

Over a year, the Bissell steam cleaner took quite a beating. In September, it was reduced to working only through the hand-held attachment. With our guests from Australia arriving in October, we decided to drop it off for a tune-up in mid-September. We chose a small, family-owned hardware store to do the repairs. Walking into the “Walters Appliance Store” feels like revisiting a hardware store in the 1950s.

“The man scowled at me when I dropped of the order,” Jon said when he returned. “That’s odd, the female clerk is always so friendly,” I answered. “Hum.” We shrugged our shoulders at the inconsistency that describes the pseudo-Southern hospitality of our new home and went on with the daily tasks of the day.

And so, gentle readers. My precious steam-cleaner vacuum cleaner sat and sat and sat in this quaint repair shop. In mid-October, 3 1/2 weeks after delivery, my husband happened to call. “We’re waiting on a part to be delivered, we never promised it would be done before six weeks” was the curt answer. “Oh well, no clean floors for the visiting 18 month old” we sighed.

I called two days before my folks came for Thanksgiving. “We just got in a big part order from Bissell, unfortunately the part you need is on back order. The company will ship it straight out in three to four days.” “Oh well, no clean carpets for Thanksgiving, maybe by the St. Nicholas party” I said.

On December 4, I called again. “Is our steam-cleaner fixed yet?” I asked hopefully. Instead of the nice clerks, I happened upon the surly one. What transpired next during our strained conversation can only be described as “provoking circumstances.”

I hung up the phone feeling so low. I was a girl who once commanded armies by phone (figuratively of course.) As a lawyer, my phone calls could produce results. Now I was a frazzled housewife who couldn’t even get the vacuum repairman to acknowledge that thirteen weeks was quote “a long time” to wait for an ordered part to appear.

“I can still write a letter!” I thought angrily. As I nursed the baby, I composed all sorts of fiery language. My letter of complaint to the boss was going to be expertly worded, subtly crafted. It was going to get me noticed and get the job done, by Jove! Somewhere in the midst of this imaginary tirade with computer screen, I remembered I wanted the vacuum quickly for the sole reason of entertaining neighbors on St. Nicholas’ Feast Day. Somehow, evasive threats of legal action didn’t fit into the spirit of my plan.

Christian charity demanded that I forgive the repair guy. But I wasn’t going to be a sissy and let such behavior go. I drafted a second imaginary letter telling the guy that I was forgiving him in the spirit of Christmas, but he better appreciate it! At that point, I realized the whole letter writing campaign was fruitless.

I felt sad. I was just a woman, who through no fault of her own was without a steam cleaner and without means to hire a visit from Stanley Steam-Cleaner. I’d clean and decorate the apartment to the best of my abilities. The mud tracks could be hidden with throw rugs. The coffee stains under the dining room table had remained through three sets of house guests and would just have to remain for three more.

“I just want to have the rugs clean by Christmas. I want the house clean & looking shiny for baby Jesus.” That was my soft, resigned prayer after the anger over the Appliance Store had disappeared.

Last week “call the Appliance Store” slipped off the “must do list.” It got displaced by choir practice, Adoration and the massive hunt for rechargeable D batteries. “I guess the steam cleaner won’t appear by Christmas” I thought.

So it was a clear shock when at 10:30 Christmas Eve, we got a message on the answering machine. “This is Elvis from Walters. You’re steam cleaner is ready for pick-up.” I called back immediately; the clerk had no record of my repair being finished in the computer. “Ah figures,” I thought. I braced myself for more disappointment. After the clerks fact-checking mission he returned. “Your vacuum is finished. It’s under warranty, so there is no charge.”

Finished! No Charge? Jon and I did the happy dance.

While the men in my house went to pick up the vacuum cleaner, I started cleaning the floors of toys and debris. (I want it on record that I’m so trained as a mother of a young son that when I found the two fist-size rocks and a large stick in my hall closet, I recognized these as precious playthings and swept AROUND them.)

What are the chances that this task would wait for three months and suddenly be finished Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve. So that Christmas Morning my family can sit on clean carpet to open their presents. So my baby can learn to crawl without dirt sticking to her knees. So that my husband’s mold allergy attacks can subside. So that my son & I can renew our commitment to potty training with new vigor.

The “second year of the Steam-Cleaner for Christmas,” as this humble miracle is now called at my house, has taught me something else. You can get what you pray for. If your asking for the right things for the right reasons, you get what you need when you need it.
That’s a lesson in faith that our material needs will be met to carry over in 2008 as we face massive car repairs, Hannah’s Catholic school tuition, and a hundred other unexpected crisis for a family of five.

And the second lesson, is that it should be easy to practice “meekness”. If we have access to the amazing power of saintly intercession, it should be easier for me to keep my temper. After all, we access to an unimaginable power and aid. It will be easier to practice meekness in the future if I remember that I have St. Nicholas on my side to insure that my families’ holy feasts will be celebrate with clean floors to match our clean hearts.

A Reed Shaken In the Wind

Last week, I slipped into pervasive sadness. On Monday night, I messed up on my meekness pledge. On Tuesday, we were out of gas money, so no trip to rosary group. The baby was fussy at nights with her teething pain; my three-year-old needed hourly changes of his Thomas the Train underwear. By Wednesday, I entertained such thoughts as “Next week, I get two five day weekends with Jon! Oh, but what does it matter? On January 2, I’ll be back to this same drudgery.” Not Depression with a “capital D” thank goodness, but a sore, weary spirit nevertheless.

I’ve struggled with these bouts of drudgery & depression before. Yet this time was different. This time, I didn’t have the fantasy of thinking, “just hang in there a few more months and then I’ll get a copy-writing job” or “things will get easier when the baby is weaned.” For the first time, in the middle of an “I can’t BELIEVE this is my life” freak-out, there wasn’t anywhere else I wanted to be. I didn’t want to return to working outside the home. I don’t want Maria to be our youngest child. I know the daily tasks of cleaning sheets, neatening the train toys, stirring the chicken dumplings are vital for my husband, my children, the Catholic Church and the world in general. The collective weight of performing these tasks day in and day out for the next two decades, just suddenly seemed “not fun.”

So I was grouchy. I was touchy. I was not feeling well and giving God a piece of my mind. “I’m doing every thing that you asked of me. Why is this still so hard?”

Thankfully Tuesday’s Advent Bible Study brought an answer. A snip of Sunday’s Gospel reading stuck in my mind. By Saturday, I’d reconciled to sufficiently to make a good confession and received some of the sweetest advice I ever heard from a new priest.
By Sunday’s homily I was primed to hear the words of John the Baptist in a new way.

“What did you go out in the desert to see? A reed swayed in the wind?” Matthew 11:2-11

That image of “a reed swayed in the wind” really hit me. What did I expect when I quit work to stay home and raise my Catholic saplings? My answer is cliché. When I finally reconciled to remaining a full-time mother, Hannah was 2 & Alex was 1, I imagined leading a happy, bustling family of six kids. I thought I’d return to my favorite job as a camp counselor. I’d get to whip the kids from activity to activity, sing silly songs in the car, chop up carrot-sticks into zip-lock bags and whisk the stroller out for long outings. The days would be busy with zoo trips and dentist appointments. Occasionally, I deal with the drama of broken laundry machines or sick dogs. (Camp life was always filled with daily dramas.) Briskness, Orderliness, Efficiency. I wanted to be a woman who “got things done.”

Now, my days with a small child and two, slightly older ones, are anything but brisk & efficient. I transfer the laundry painfully with one hand while jiggling a 19-pound fussy baby on my hip. If I take a catnap at 10 AM after a painful night with Maria, I’ll awake to find all 9 bananas that I’ve just brought home from Safeway have a single bite taken out of them. The Teriyaki chicken gets burned because if I let one throwing offence by the three year old go without an immediate redirection to the naughty chair, I’ll soon be taking the four year old to urgent care after a sharp object hits her face. Etcetera, Etcetera, and So Forth.

“What did you got out into the wildness to see?” Jesus asks me.

If I left the working world, a world of fake glory and brisk to-do lists, what did I expect to find? I should expect to my mothering work to operate the same way as my former law office. My new work is humble. It is plain. It has far more in common with the humble Sisters of Charity in Calcutta than with the CEO of Microsoft. “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People” is not helpful reading at this point in my life. Thankfully, mediation on the Holy Scripture isn’t just helpful, it’s hopeful.

I feel so comforted that the mighty John the Baptist, the babe who leapt in his mother’s womb at the presence of Jesus, still struggled with doubts when locked up in a prison cell. His human frailty gives me hope. “John had doubts about Jesus,” my homilist intoned on Sunday. “But he had the wisdom to go directly to Jesus to get those doubts resolved.” Like John, last week I struggled with human doubts. Yet I do not wish to remain “a reed shaken in the wind.” I will strive to keep my faith strong & steady even when life’s circumstances seem too rough or simply too monotonous.

Growing the Virtue of Meekness

Et Tu Jen has another great post on this issue.

Here's my comment:

Inspiring words from my Advent bible study tonight on this issue. "Produce good fruit as the evidence of your repentance." Matthew, 4: 8, the reading for this coming Sunday.

"Consider that God wants to fill you up with honey, but if you are already full of vinegar where will you put the honey? What was in the vessel must be emptied out; the vessel itself must be washed out and made clean and scoured; hard work though it may be, so that if be made fit for something else, whatever it may be." St. Augustine

Pot scrubbing is one of my least favorite kitchen tasks. I'll be scrubbing with more reflection this advent knowing that I'm also working on cleansing my heart of anger, arrogence, and selfishness- making my interior more receptive to the sweet honey of the Eucharist on Christmas Day.

Great Thanksgiving Meekness Challenge

So we are Catholic-- that means in addition to roasting the perfect Turkey this Thanksgiving, we're also responsible for thinking charitable thoughts about all our relatives and exhibiting the virtue of meekness despite traffic congestion, non-napping toddlers and broken printers.

Et Tu Jen has wonderful advice from St. Francis de Sales on this issue. If you've ever successfully wrestled with your temper, or other habitual shortcoming, please leave some advice on our comment section. Log in on Sunday and let us know how you did with the virtue of meekness over the holidays.

Grant Us Your Peace

(Note: This post contains graphic details of the Iraq War.)

This week’s New Yorker contains a long article titled “Inside the Surge,” by Jon Lee Anderson. I read seven pages about the problems of retaliatory violence, all of it weary and familiar. Then I read the following passage

“ Um Jafaar is a handsome, elderly woman. When I arrived at her home, with Karim, she was wearing a black abaya, and I noticed blue tribal tattoos on her chin and her hands. She invited me to sit down on a couch, and sat next to me in an armchair. Jafaar’s three young daughters were watching us. When I asked Um Jafaar if she wanted revenge for her son’s death, she got up from her chair, came over, and kissed the top of my head.

“Yes,” I want revenge,” she said. “I am a mother, and I lost my son for nothing.” She began weeping, great wracking sobs. When she recovered, Um Jafaar pointed to her granddaughters. “Look, they have no father,” she said. “Why?”

Um Jafaar went on to tell me that she took the body parts of Amar’s victims, wrapped in cloth, to his grave, in the holy city of Najaf, and buried them there. “I talk to my son, I tell him, “Here, this is from those who killed you, I take revenge.” Moving one hand in a horizontal circle, she said, “I put them around the grave. So far, I have taken one hand, one eye, an Adam’s apple, toes, fingers, ears, and noses. I asked her how many Mahdi men Amar had killed. “I don’t know; eighteen, twenty? But still my heart hurts. Even if we kill all of them, I won’t have comfort,” she said. (page 66, The New Yorker, Nov 19, 2007).

Ouch! I inhaled so deeply at the passage where Um Jafaar names the body parts she buried around her murdered son’s grave that I hurt my chest muscle.

As Christians we are called to do impossible tasks: forgive our enemies, pray for them and love them. When we mothers go the opposite direction, when we give into to our “natural” and sinful desires, we take down the whole family with us.

Jafaar’s surviving son is busy murdering the men he believes are responsible for his brother’s death. At least eighteen men have been killed so far. I don’t doubt that many men make that same mistake on their own initiative. Yet how much higher is the body count going to rise, if a mother requests such action? Then the mother further sanctions the killings by burying the victim’s body parts in her son’s grave?

We have such a tremendous power as mothers. Our sons will do anything to please us. Our children breathe our feelings, our thoughts and our desires as their own. Whether it is the daily grind of stress or ultimate tragedy, our response set the emotional tone for the family.

During the confessions of our sins during Mass today, I had an image of a woman burying body parts on top of a grave today. I got heartsick. I am also that woman. How many times have I gossiped about my family? How many angry words have I said to my husband and children, in this week alone?

My precious little children are watching and listening. Yesterday, on the tire swing at the playground, Lex kept calling “Hannah get off and come play with me.” He was tired and had a runny nose. He kept repeating the same sentence over and over again. “Lex, you’re being difficult” Hannah snapped. I heard that “difficult” ring across the playground. “Difficult!” Not the normal vocabulary for a four year old. My daughter absorbed that word and that tone from me. I use that expression when I have trouble getting Hannah’s shoes on her squirmy feet.

Blessed Mother, help us model your infinite charity, forgiveness and patience. Help us lead our families to heaven. Pray for us, that we may become worthy of the promises of Christ.

Watering the Seeds of Faith-Meekness

I'm currently on a major prayer quest to add the virtue of meekness to my life. In mid July, in the midst of yet another "I lost my temper with the kids X number of times this month" confession, I just broke down and asked my priest "what can I do about this?"

The priest said that it is not enough to just attempt to resist my ingrained "sin" pattern. Instead, I should also try to strengthen the corresponding virtue to that sin. I got the mental image of going to physical therapy. Because I am now lifting the weight of three children & have a natural tendency towards anger, I need to do some serious stomach crunches with the virtue of meekness.

Of course, I'd NEVER heard of the virtue of meekness. Who trains themselves to be meek in today's world? But after some Internet research, I stumbled onto this

valuable Beatitudes site

Now my working definition is "restraint of anger in the event of provoking circumstances." Here I am, in the midst of some very provoking circumstances and practicing trying to get a handle of that whiplash of a temper and angry tongue of mine.

I'll keep you updated on my inchworm slow progress on this matter. Here are the few pitifully slow measures I've been able to implement over the past six weeks.

-If I do insist on fighting with my husband (wrongly) over whether I, as an anemic breastfeeding mother, still have to take my yucky tasting prenatal vitamins, I can at least force myself to sit down on the floor when I hear my voice starting to rise in anger. This is my physical cue to stop arguing and start implementing meekness.

-I've discovered that praying to the child's guardian angel when a kid is on a disobedience kick really helps. This changes the discussion from "WHY AREN'T YOU LISTENING TO ME" to, "Guardian angel please help (said child) to learn skill of following directions." (As a former Protestant, I didn't even really register that kids had guardian angels until I noticed this month that their upcoming feast day is on October 2. I'm still feel pretty awkward praying to them, but am going with the mantra that practice makes perfect)

-If I'm losing the battle to control my temper, it is possible to take a break from the family, stare at a tree, and remind myself that I have just taken the Eucharist. (Done today at a Sheetz Gas Station on I-79 in the midst of a five hour car trip.)

Have you successfully conquered a frequent sin like gossip or losing your temper? Do you have any insights on the importance of meekness?