(If you want to hear Lori read this story click)here

 

 

One of my favorite ministers was in town last weekend and I heard he was preaching. The twins were playing handbells for an earlier service, but I whisked out to make it to the eleven o'clock service to hear him. We are still new at leaving the three youngest kids home alone, even though they have a combined age of thirty four, but John and I braved it and went to church together. 

 

The sermon fed me. This was the man who guided me as I was falling in love in Chicago three decades ago, and his love for the Word is effusive. The story he talked about was the complete hopelessness around the death of Lazarus. He choked up with the emotion accrued from a lifetime of witnessing renewed vigor spring up in seemingly dead marriages and lives. The minister carried me through the experiences of Martha, Mary and Lazarus as if he knew them by sight. They trudged through their own despair, anger and loss. This was how I felt. 

 

I began parenting with dreams of Team Odhner, standing at the sink elbow to elbow, whistling while we worked. But it has not turned out that way. That ideal died a long time ago. I blame myself as much as anyone, because it was my place to lead them. I failed.

 

Yet the story of Lazarus kindled new life within me. I stood up for the last song feeling alive. 

 

I checked my phone in the social hall, and there were fourteen voice mails from home, with pathetic pleas from distraught little girls to come home RIGHT NOW. 

 

We drove home and calmed the ruffled spirits. And as if it was mere coincidence, something shifted. John spent three hours scouring bathrooms. The twins started laundry, and John and I carried the baton along. Benjamin took out the recycling. I had asked Zack if he would run the dishwasher but by the time I went to bed the grungy plates were still rampant. I shrugged. You can't have everything. I was pleased with what had happened.

 

Yet when I woke up, the beautiful granite counter shone up at me, happy to be freed of its burden, and the sink was empty. The butcher block was cleared and ready for business, and the stove had clean pots on it. The kitchen had not looked this inviting in a long time. 

 

I am not expecting the problem of communal chores to be solved forever. But I do feel grateful for the chance to notice miracles when they come my way.