On Motherhood & Profanity

"On Motherhood & Profanity" from Love Has a Price Tag by Elisabeth Elliot
[I was reminded recently of this essay -- and though it lacks emphases on joy and delight which I often see missing in E.Elliot's writing, I still think it is an encouragement. Throw in serving the Lord with gladness and the delight of obedience and the pleasure found in doing work well and living in community with your husband and children, and then the lesson would be more full, more savory. Nonetheless, the sermon delivers Truth well.
Following is the essay transcribed in full with a few adaptions.]


"Ok now, which one of you clowns put that bag of M&Ms in the grocery cart?" The mother looks harried.

Two boys, maybe five and seven, eye each other and race away toward the gumball machine near the supermarket door. There is an infant [riding in a front carrier], and a two year old occupying the [grocery cart seat]. The mother picks up the M&M candy bag and starts toward the aisle to return it, but [sighs and tosses it back into the cart -- maybe she can use them for monster cookies later in the week. The two year old starts crying.] Patiently she fishes out her [bank card, signs,] and pushes the cart with the babies in it, herds the two boys through the rain to the station wagon in the parking lot.

I go with her in my mind's eye. Jump out in the rain. Open the garage door. Drive in. Close door. Babies, boys, bags into the house -- in how many trips? Phone rings. Answer phone, change baby, wipe muddy tracks from kitchen floor. [Let out dog, let in dog, wipe dog's feet, give dog clean water.] Feed baby, put groceries away, hide M&Ms, start peeling vegetables, take clothes out of dryer, [intervene and mediate a] fight between the two older children, feed two year old, answer phone again, fold clothes, change baby, get boys to: 1) hang up coats 2) stop teasing two year old 3) set table. Light oven, put baby down for nap, stop squabble, [clean] up two year old, put chicken in oven, answer phone, put away clothes, finish peeling vegetables, [brush hair, brush teeth, take deep breath -- look calm and happy] for husband coming through door.

I see this implacable succession of exigencies in my mind's eye. They come with being a mother. I also see the dreams she dreams sometimes -- [write a book of essays, paint a series of figures and portraits, learn the guitar better and begin writing song lyrics down instead of just in my head, travel, make independent films, become a freelance food writer, design a line of stationary and custom made paper boxes. Have a professional haircut, a wardrobe from Anthropologie, J.Crew and Zac Posen. Wear luscious stilletos and funky italian shoes on a regular basis. Have a job with quarterly reviews and someone letting you know if you're doing a good job -- a vocation where you finish a project that is actually finished and doesn't need to be done over again in 15 minutes or 24 hours. And you're done at 5 o'clock every day -- the rest of the day evening and weekends all yours.]

I know how it is. I have a mother. I am a mother. I've produced a mother (my daughter Valerie, has a two year old and expects another child soon). I watched my own mother cope valiantly and efficiently with a brood of six. ("If one child takes all your time," she used to say, "six can't take any more.") We were -- we still are -- her life. I understand that. Of all the gifts of my life surely those of being somebody's wife and somebody's mother are among the greatest.

But I watch my daughter and other mothers of her generation and I see they have some strikes against them that we didn't have. [They have been told that finding their own personhood and happiness is what is best for their children; That intelligent women need creative outlets and ways to make a difference -- which is true -- that they just can't get taking care of a baby and a house and a husband all day long seven days a week -- which isn't true (read Edith Schaeffer's The Hidden Art of Homemaking); That quality time with a mother who is fulfilled and successful in the sphere of the real (!) world is better than quantity time with a mother who is bored and lonely and thwarted in her personal pursuits and passions.]

...Young mothers often come to me troubled because they can't answer the arguments logically or theologically. They feel, deep in their bones, that there is something terrible twisted about the whole thing but they can't put their finger on what it is. [And there is part of them that does get bored changing five thousand diapers a day and is lonely for adult conversation and does guiltily feel they might be doing something more stimulating or gratifying or enjoyable.]

I think I know what it is. Profanity. Not swearing. I'm not talking about breaking the Third Commandment. I'm talking about treating as meaningless that which is freighted with meaning. Treating as common that which is hallowed. Regarding as a mere triviality what is really a divine design. Profanity is failure to see the inner mystery.

When women -- sometimes well-meaning, earnest, truth-seeking ones -- say "Get out of the house and do something creative, find something meaningful, something with more direct access to reality", it is a dead giveaway that they have missed the deepest definition of creation, of meaning, of reality. And when you start seeing the world as opaque, that is, as an end in itself instead as transparent, when you ignore the Other World where this one ultimately finds its meaning, of course housekeeping (and any other kind of work if you do it long enough) becomes tedious and empty.

But what have buying groceries, changing diapers and peeling vegetables got to do with creativity? Aren't those the very things that keep us from it? Isn't it that kind of drudgery that keeps us in bondage? It's insipid and confining, it's what one conspicuous feminist called "a life of idiotic ritual...." To her I would answer: Ritual, yes. Idiotic, no, not to the Christian -- for although we do the same things anybody else does, and we do them over and over in the same way, the ordinary transactions of everyday life are the very means of transfiguration. It is the common stuff of this world which, because of the Word's having been "made flesh", is shot through with meaning, with charity, with the glory of God.

But this is what we so easily forget. Men as well as women have listened to those quasi-rational claims, have failed to see the fatal fallacy, and have capitulated. Words like personhood, liberation, fulfillment and equality have had a convincing ring and we have not questioned their popular definitions or turned on them the searchlight of Scripture or even of our common sense. We have meekly agreed that the kitchen sink is an obstacle instead of an altar, and we have obediently carried on our shoulders the chips these reductionists have told us to carry.

This is what I mean by profanity: We have forgotten the mystery, the dimension of glory. It was Mary herself who showed it to us so plainly. By the offering up of her physical body to become the God bearer, she transfigured for all mothers, for all time, the meaning of motherhood. She cradled, fed and bathed her baby -- who was the very God of very God -- so that when we cradle, feed and bathe ours we may see beyond that simple task to the God who in love and humility "dwelt among us and we beheld His glory".

Those who focus only on the drabness of the supermarket, or on the onions or the diapers themselves, haven't an inkling of the mystery that is at stake here, the mystery revealed in the birth of that Baby and consummated on the Cross: my life for yours.

The routines of housework and of mothering may be seen as a kind of death, and it is appropriate that they should be, for they offer the chance, day after day, to lay down one's life for others. Then they are no longer routines. By being done with love and offered up to God with praise, they are thereby hallowed as the vessels of the tabernacle were hallowed -- not because they were different from other vessels in quality or function, but because they were offered to God. A mother's part in sustaining the life of her children and making it pleasant and comfortable is no triviality. It calls for self-sacrifice and humility, but it is the route, as was the humiliation of Jesus, to glory.

To modern mothers I would say 'Let Christ Himself be your example as to what your attitude should be. For he who had always been God by nature, did not cling to His prerogatives as God's equal, but stripped Himself of all privilege by consenting to be a slave by nature and being born as a mortal man. And, having become man, He humbled Himself by living a life of utter obedience, even to the extent of dying, and the death He died was the death of a common criminal. That is why God has now lifted Him so high...' (Phil. 2:5-11).

It is a spiritual principle as far removed from what the world tells us as heaven is removed from hell: If you are willing to lose your life, you'll find it. It is the principle expressed by John Keble in 1822:

If on our daily course our mind
Be set to hallow all we find,
New treasures still, of countless price,
God will provide for sacrifice.