Redefining what counts

It's disorienting to be in new spaces; moving to a new place, moving to a new job, moving to a new stage in life. Having done all of those in the past 2 years, I've had a lot of time to be disoriented and to think about it.

A friend recently moved from East Africa to the States and discovered that her expert malaria-prevention skills are useless, kind of like my parallel-parking skills and my turning-left-on-red skills. Instead I've been boning up my navigating-the-medical-industrial-complex skills and taking-the-kid-to-preschool skills.

My sister-in-law is a newly minted mom and bemoans her days of "getting nothing done." Actually she and all moms do a lot, just none of it counts. It's a particularly hard adjustment if your previous life had easily identifiable to-do lists. She's a pharmacist and there are obvious pharmacist things to do and patients to not kill. I was a teacher and grad student. I had specific hoops to jump, lessons to deliver, and papers to grade.

The new mommy check list is woefully short: Keep baby alive and clean. When possible, rest and feed yourself. So I was very encouraged to read the exhortation to find "quiet ways to love and serve others without applause" That really sums up new motherhood, particularly for stay-at-home moms. There is tragically little applause and lots of demands.

However, the more I walk this Jesus journey the more I think this is the call to all Jesus followers. Flash and bang, shock and awe should be the exception not the rule. This is something I so value in my husband, his faithfulness in the ordinary. Actually, it can be irritating because his service can appear to be inflexible habit, but he's so consistent about it; doing the dishes, taking out the trash, closing up the house for the night, tending to our electronics, tending to the church electronics, tending to the neighbors' electronics and so forth.

My bent is to think that things you could proudly tell a stranger are the things that count; publications, projects, travels, etc. Changing diapers, burping babies, taking out trash, and fixing computers are not things you would discuss and do not count. And that's crap. All those hidden hours of love and service count, and they count in the eyes of the one who matters most, our Creator.