If You Give a Mum a Muffin

If you give a mum a muffin you can get a miracle

“Mum?”

“Hmmm?”

“Are you going to do something when we leave home?  I mean, like a career or something?  When you are done homeschooling?”

I confess I clenched my teeth just a bit when the question was uttered.  I could have responded stating my life would cease to have meaning and that I would put myself out to pasture and crochet hats for neighborhood squirrels but it seemed a tad sarcastic.  “I expect by that point my life will have lost all meaning.”

“Mom, I’m just asking.”

“With any luck you will be able to afford my therapy and I’ll figure it out then.” I retorted.

There isn’t a mother on the planet that doesn’t struggle with self-worth at some point, but lately I don't have the energy for an existential crisis.  As one decade as a stay at home mother in a foreign country stretched into two, I am well aware what I have achieved, what I have gained and what I have lost.  It is part of the framework of my thinking and most days I’m okay with my choices.  On the grey days, when loneliness comes to visit, I have a harder time assessing my worth.  

Essentially, you want me on your team if you need to move furniture or want to eat muffins.  I make great muffins.  And chairs, I can move chairs like no body’s business.  Just last week I moved stacks of chairs across a church sanctuary and narrowly averted disaster when I miscalculated the weight of the stack while sliding it onto the chair dolly.  Some fancy footwork, a nearly separated shoulder and 3 cuss words later I had those critters tamed and begging for mercy.  (What church in their right mind stacks chairs 10 high?  Everyone knows not to go higher than 7.)  You might also need me if you want to make a good cup of tea, but as I live in America there is less call for that skill set, the Boston Tea Party doing what it did to the New World’s tea drinkers.  No.  I don’t drink coffee thank you for asking.  Because I am legally not permitted to work, I have accepted my role as a mere mother and maker of muffins.  Until I’m given something else to do, you’ll find me at home making tea and dishing out carbs while school happens.

Ironically my friend called this week to pray through some of the issues that were transpiring at her school, where she worked.  Do you ever pray for teachers my friend?  Remember to pray for them, because if anyone is on the front lines of society, trying to build into the lives of youngsters with limited resources it is those in schools.  My girlfriend wanted to pray for a little who was having a rough time.  “Ellie” came from a house of working professionals.  Sadly, her parents could not make the marriage work and Ellie was suffering as her family crumbled around her.  Time with parents was at a premium and Ellie was feeling it, which was why she had narrowly averted a meltdown entering school earlier in the morning.  The transition from home to school is not easy when a child is feeling insecure.  My friend kept Ellie close and watched her throughout the morning.  

At lunchtime, my friend and her student Sammy sat to have lunch.  Ellie joined them.  Sammy had a muffin in his lunch and my girlfriend started a conversation with her outrageous enthusiasm about making muffins, the best kind of muffins and how she made them for her own children.  Something about this conversation strained Ellie’s heart.  “I don’t have a muffin.  No one makes me muffins.  I don’t get those things in my lunch.”  She opened her lunch box and peered in the offending container. Those three sentences fractured my friends’ heart. Sweet Ellie realized that she was missing out on something.  When a family is in crisis, things like muffins are not as important as arranging car rides, suitcases and bill payments.  But to Ellie, muffins were important and at that lunch table, the missing muffin was paramount in her mind.  “Well Ellie,” my friend replied, “you have done such a good job today, I will happily bake muffins and bring you one for your lunch tomorrow.”  “You will?”  Ellie beamed, peace filling her heart. 

So it was that during our prayer time that evening, we prayed for Ellie and all the brokenness that muffin represented.  We prayed for 7 year olds, their sensitivity, and the injustice that comes from being little and having no say. We prayed for families that were holding on and families that were holding out.  It was the kind of prayer that makes your heart ache.  The next day, when Ellie flew into the classroom and looked frantically for my friend, she was given a bag with 2 muffins: one for her lunch and one for the weekend if it could last that long.   To a 7 year old, 2 banana chocolate chip muffins are a mighty kind of joy. Muffins can be miraculous. 

So I wanted to pray for all you mere mothers and muffin makers out there.  Perhaps you are only a secretary, don’t have a college degree, are balding or are in some astonishing way, absolutely insufficient. 

Welcome to the club.

In God’s economy, a mere nothing can become something, muffins can move mountains and the faith behind your loving actions can change the world. 

Jump in, love deeply and do a million little things.

Praying for you this week,

xoxKaren