Glimpses of Joy

“How can it be a large career to tell other people’s children about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one’s own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone, and narrow to be everything to someone?” – G.K. Chesterton

These are some thoughts I’ve had bouncing around for a while and an attempt to pull them together. As we’ve had our first snow storm and I’ve become obsessed with nap schedules, I’m feeling more homebody-ish. And as we’ve been more home-bound, I spend more time keeping spaces tidy for my own sanity’s sake. And laundry. Always, so much laundry. And as my days are filled with small tasks that are quickly undone, I’m finding myself, not frustrated, but grateful. (This is definitely grace, and also due to getting more sleep lately).

I think our world is in need of the small. And this G.K. Chesterton quote – not being the same thing to everyone, but everything to someone. This making of a home, these small daily tasks, this caring for children … it is hard work, definitely, but it is also good. And this is really me telling myself this, because younger, college-age Sarah living in the Bay Area, needed to hear this.

If I could say something to that Sarah, I would say, don’t make choices that are motivated by fear of what other people might think. If there’s something you want to do, even if no one else around you is interested in it, that doesn’t mean it’s not for you. In my case, it was marriage and motherhood.

But I was afraid. Afraid that I was too young, afraid to “waste my degree,” and afraid to be “just a mom.”

Just a mom. 

I think the root of that fear for me was the hiddenness, the unseen, nature of motherhood. That I would be lonely and bored if I stopped working and stayed at home with my kids. That I would no longer be making a difference in the world, having an impact. Identity, really. And community – would I have anything to talk about with my friends and family who spend most of their time in the work world, if I spent most of mine in my home with babies and toddlers?

I have found great community, now. And I don’t struggle with this anymore. I see how motherhood has peeled the onion of my selfishness and will continue forever to do so. I see how it has changed me for the better and how freaking hard it is, and how it is a path to holiness. I am not lonely and I am not bored. It could be argued that indeed, my Stanford education has been wasted because I am not earning a six-figure income, but another way to view it is from my kids’ perspective. My mom never used her BA in Anthropology from Stanford, but my sister and I benefitted immensely from the ways she was shaped by her time there. So, I am grateful to be the recipient of her “wasted degree,” at least. (I do realize that I’m speaking from a place of immense privilege – to have a BA and to not have to work to pay off tuition debt). 

I think about the good of the small and the deep. Of being everything to someone. I think about the work that can be done, the impact that can be made from the cloister of the somewhat home-bound. A friend who recently became a mother after finishing grad school told me that in this season, while she’s at home with a baby, she realized that she can be connected to the global church through prayer. I think about how St. Therese, who entered a convent at age 15 and died seven years later, is the co-patron of missions for the Church. The power of intercessory prayer.

—I found this in my drafts from 2019. 5 years later, these thoughts still resonate, though I don’t feel the need to share them in a apologetic tone, and I still don’t know what this Chesterton quote is from, and maybe that’s why I never published it.  But I can see how that period of time 5 years ago was the beginning for me of experiencing motherhood as fertile ground for the contemplative life, and how this has only deepened for me since. The idea that hard physical labor and contemplative prayer go hand in hand, I am living this. The idea that in the spiritual life nothing is wasted – nothing is too small, too hidden, too unglamorous for God to use for His glory. The friend I reference who had just finished grad school and had her first child, we have both had two more babies since then, born around the same times. Our friendship is one of accompaniment in our vocations, from across the country. We have joked about being like two abbots, encouraging and praying for each other as we lead our own hidden little communities. Who knows what 5 years from now will look like, but I enjoyed finding this window into my thoughts from back then. Enough to share them now, I suppose.