I really wanted to walk him to school this morning because I enjoy the conversation that fresh air and exercise unwrap, but here I am, alone, sitting in our car, far away from the mess I left inside.
This morning we have bent and twisted around words like, “hate” and “can’t handle” and “hurry,” and all that time passing has not given me a boy ready for school.
All that time passing has not offered much honor this day.
I have followed him around every room, reminding him of what’s left to do, and at every turn he found distraction instead of my get-ready expectation. Those hairs he saved from the bathtub that he wants to examine under his microscope when he gets home from school today, and he just wants to make sure they’re still on the side of the bathtub where he left them. Those books in the library-turned-bedroom, where he emptied a whole shelf and only put back half last night because he got too tired to finish, and he thinks maybe now would be a good time to organize it. Those socks, unmatched, and why can’t he find socks that match with pulling every single white one from his drawer and then putting them back in, one by time-consuming one?
I bark out my commands, “Put away your blanket.” “Your pajamas. Don’t leave them on the floor, please.” “Brush your teeth now,” and I can feel the panic embracing the frustration because his distractions hide themselves in books and little brothers and stuffed animals and every random thought in his 7-year-old head, those science experiments he’d like to do (because he can’t tell me about them while he’s packing up his backpack) and those books he’d like to get around to reading (because he can’t put his pajamas in the hamper while he’s trying to compile the list in his head) and those stories he’d like to write and record in his journal.
And it’s not an honoring way to speak, this barking, and this communication, with its always nagging, always ordering, always hurrying, holds no love for another. The problem is I feel the clock, shackled to my ankle, and everywhere I follow him, it follows me, and I count down the minutes until he should be ready like it’s a death sentence.
Because it is.
Because I expect 7:15 a.m. Because here it is, and he’s not ready and it’s time to leave, now, and we must hurry, hurry, hurry.
It’s not the mismatched socks or the no-free-time-left or even the no-lunch-today-if-you-don’t-put-your-lunchbox-in-your-backpack declaration that does it, it’s the “no books today for your book box because you weren’t ready in time” that does. He collapses, liquid like the tears in his eyes, even though he knows this is the consequence, even though we’ve talked about it, even though we remind him every.single.day because this hurry happens every.single.day, and he starts throwing “punishment” around like I’ve been throwing “hurry” around, and I just cannot take one more minute because I’m sick, sick, sick of my tone and my face and my heart, none of them saying I honor you or I love you.
Hurry holds no honor.
Hurry races love, and unless we pull the reins, slow it all down, hurry will be the victor, and love will be ash-dust we trample back to the starting line.
“You have to burn to be fragrant. To scent the whole house you have to burn to the ground,” says the poet Rumi, and this is what is happening today. I am burning to the ground, and it must be the good burning, the kind of burning that turns everything toward love and honor.
Will I make it the good burning?
I walk through the fire, choking on the smoke of that old nature, stirring up the ashes lying around my feet, and my throat feels closed tight and my eyes flame with tears because I am dying, and it’s a little one who is doing it.
It’s a little one, a child, causing this self-death.
“Desperation, let me always know how to welcome you—and put in your hands the torch to burn down the house,” Rumi says, and it is desperation that is burning this house of expected perfection, this house of get-ready-in-the-time-I-give-you, this house of must-do and get-done and what’s next. Every single day it’s a war, another fire to burn my house down, because my brain is spinning round, logging that milk and the bowls of yogurt that must be cleared, quickly, from the table before curious twins go exploring and dump it all out on the living room floor, like they did last week; charting the minutes left between breakfast and leaving and all the 7-year-old must do between; registering, down in the depths, those taxes that must be filed before mid-month, just to get them off my plate.
Hurry, hurry, hurry, before it’s too late.
Desperation grips me in a head-lock, rips away those pieces that care too much what others think, that find too much identity in meeting those time deadlines, that scratch and claw and punch when expectations go unmet.
The clock, tick-tocking, and this house of self, burning. Desperation begins the fire, because there’s got to be more than this.
There is more than this.
Hurry makes it hard to see, but it’s there all the same, and once the house is burned to the ground, when those old places in me become ashes of hope, when all the smoke clears, I can see it clear.
Halfway through the day, his daddy takes up a cookie, packed in a container I forgot to put in his lunchbox this morning. In it is a note. He will pull it out and read it, maybe smiling at those little chocolate smudges on white. He will read about how a mama’s love will never run out, just like God’s, how a mama loves no matter what, how a mama can argue and argue and fight and fight with her boy and still she’ll love him just as much as she ever did before.
Because love doesn’t tally wrongs.
Because love puts up with everything and anything that comes along.
Because love endures, no matter what.
He will read about how a mama regrets the hurry and hopes tomorrow will be another try, if her boy will forgive. And in the place of that hurry house, another house builds, every time I choose honor and love over hurry, and this one will stand on brick and stone, and no fire will ever, ever, ever burn it to the ground.
Day by day, moment by moment, we build.
This is an excerpt from Family on Purpose Episode 2: We Honor God. Each Other. All People. To find out more about Family on Purpose or to sign up for the notification list so you’ll receive an email each time a new episode releases, visit the project landing page.
