Beauty of the Routine

How can I ever forget a two-day canoe trip through the lakes of Indiana at the age of twelve?  I had just finished a Red Cross course on canoeing, learned all my strokes and packed my bags for sleeping out under the stars. I was younger than most of the girls, so that meant I didn’t get to choose the bow or the stern. I was also the least experienced, which meant I got the bow. If you know anything about canoeing, it’s the bow that provides most of the power and it’s the stern that steers and directs the canoe. I can tell you one thing, when these little twelve-year old arms paddled through four lakes, I thought I couldn’t go on anymore, I just couldn’t make it. Guess what?! I found I could. Something happened to me that day, I learned I could do more than I ever thought I could. 

The old adage…”when the going gets tough, the tough gets going,” became a reality to this little girl and I wore that saying like a badge of honor!

Growing up in the projects of Chicago actually gave me ample opportunities. In our neighborhood was a Boys Club that offered classes, contests and a summer camp. If I wanted to go to the girls’ camp I could go, but my mom said, I had to earn my way. So, I rolled up my sleeves, signed up and began to sell cookies door to door. In those days, they were fifty cents a box. I don’t remember how many cases I had to sell, but I did it and earned enough money to pay my way to summer camp for two years!!! 

At camp I earned Red Cross certificates in swimming, archery, and canoeing. I also learned how to raise and lower the American flag, help others in cleaning up the cabin, participate in cleaning up our table after meals and to eat at least one bite of everything put on the table. I particularly remember this because there were some foods that I was not particularly fond of…but I quickly learned that I would not die if I ate them. Ha!!!! Another thing that I absolutely loved were the songs. We sang songs around a campfire and made s’mores, we sang songs in the kitchen after meals, and we sang songs on the bus to and from camp. This crazy girl even took those songs to school during the year and started a singing group behind the baseball diamond in the school play ground!! Oh yeah, I was a part of the “cool group.”Hahahaha!!! We sang songs about Jacob’s Ladder, the Titanic, Noah’s ark and crazy songs like…Boom, boom ain’t it great to be crazy?!!  Complete with hand motions!!! I loved it! 

Camp was a lot of fun and I have great memories. But in order for them to offer all our classes and activities, they had to run a tight ship and a tight schedule. There was a sense in which “routine” was necessary. Simple things like making my bed, helping to sweep my cabin and cleaning up my place at the table was routine and had to be done daily. If I did not cooperate, my whole cabin suffered. So, we learned to work together and do our part.

I remember fussing a couple of times…not out loud, of course, but to myself. “Why do I have to do archery right now?!! I would rather swim. Why can’t I just sit and relax? Why do I have to do anything at all?!”

If you all ever listen to Dennis Prager, there is this story he loves to tell. Every time I hear it, I can’t help but laugh…it is so me, and a lesson I continually have to apply to this day. 

He was in the fourth of fifth grade and his teacher, who was a Rabbi, told the class it was time for prayer. Dennis raised his hand and said, “Rabbi, I don’t feel like praying right now.” He said, there was this pause, then the Rabbi said, (imagine this with a Jewish New York accent) “Dennis Prager doesn’t feel like praying right now. (another pause) So, what?!!” Then they all prayed. He learned something that day, it didn’t really matter what he felt like, some things just have to be done.

I look back at my camping experience and there was something invaluable that I learned. I learned the discipline of routine. Yes, it gets boring sometimes, and yes, I’d love to sit and relax by the pool or yack on the phone for hours, shop or do anything else but what has to be done. 

I don’t know about you, but I also have this little voice in me that sometimes says, “Go ahead, you don’t have to do this right now. Do it later. Besides it’s all for a good cause!” 

Homeschooling my children, having a hubby who is self-employed…and now, thirteen g’children and a mother nearby, it became easy for me to be at the whim of every need and for my life to be in a state of constant flux.

Inside of me, I have this battle…

One part of me says, “Yes!!! Give me the dramatic moments…let me serve overseas, start an orphanage, or be the next Billy Graham.” The other part of me, often the quieter voice, says, “be faithful in the small things. Serve God in the routine and fill your home with love.” 

Oh how easy it is to be sidetracked by the dramatic and neglect to see that there is beauty and discipline in the routine!!

I think, what makes the routine so difficult is that we don’t see results in a timely fashion. It takes years of daily practice and exercise to become a concert pianist or olympic champion. This is also true for the Christian, the mom, or any person who desires to be a person of character and strength. 

As the LORD so often will do, He tenderly prods and pokes me just when I need it. The God of the universe is my Teacher. How cool is that?!! And He is also yours!! Don’t you just love it?! He’s our loving Father, gives counsel and He’s our Friend!!!

So, if you happen to hear the Hallelujah Chorus faintly in the background, it may be the angels singing and elbowing each other while saying, “well, look down there…is that Bobbie Keith?!! Is she cooking, cleaning and finding joy in her routine?!! Hallelujah!!!

As Oswald Chambers has said, “Walking on water is easy to impulsive pluck, but walking on dry land as a disciple of Christ is a different thing…it requires the supernatural grace of God to live twenty-four hours every day as a saint, to go through drudgery as a disciple, to live an ordinary, unobserved, ignored existence as a disciple of Jesus. It is inbred in us that we have to do exceptional things for God; but we do not. We have to be exceptional in the ordinary things, to be holy in mean streets, among mean people, and this is not learned in five minutes.”

Okay, LORD, here I am. Help me to see You and find joy in the beauty and discipline of the routine.

Prayers ’n blessings, 
Bobbie 

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Patches of Godlight!

My mother was twenty years old when I was born! While many today are still in college hanging out with their buddies or pursuing career goals, my mom had me. I never once felt like I had interrupted her plans or in some way I was an inconvenience to her. She was my first friend and my first teacher.

She introduced me to the world and it was through her eyes that I saw it.

I quickly learned that there was a right and wrong. My first memory of being disciplined was when I was a toddler. I was supposed to be taking a nap on my mom’s bed, but noticed a bright red little bottle on her dresser. Somehow I managed to open it up and discovered it was like paint and you could decorate the room with red anywhere you wanted. So, what do you think I did? I painted the bedding and the dresser with my mom’s beautiful red nail polish. How fun and pretty it looked!! How shocked I was when my mom opened the door and did not think it was pretty at all. Not only was she not pleased with the red decorations, she was upset that I had disobeyed her by not staying in bed.

She did not see the situation the way I saw it!! And this little girl was beginning to see the world through grown-up eyes.

She reminded me of the rules and then gave me some rags to clean it up. I was overwhelmed with the task and learned quickly that a few minutes of fun is not worth it, if you have to clean it up!

Back in those days money was tight, so my mom made our clothes. On my first day of school, she made a matching outfit for me and my Tiny Tears doll. The dress was light brown and turquoise with puffed sleeves and a gathered skirt. I also remember a red plaid pleated skirt with suspenders. I loved to twirl in the back of the school room to see how far out it would go:-) And yes, she also made one for my Tiny Tears.

She painted a mural on our kitchen wall, grew grapes in the back yard, and made jelly. She also grew rhubarb and made the best rhubarb pie!! She took art classes at the Chicago Art Institute and loved to enter art shows when she could. How proud we all were when we would view her artwork and see her ribbons.

My mom made things beautiful and I saw beauty through her eyes. Not just in paintings or doll clothes, but I also in the world around me.

When she was in high school, she wrote a composition on what she wanted to do when she grew up. She wanted to travel…and that she did!

After a difficult marriage, she ended up raising my sister and I in the projects of Chicago. By this time she was in her twenties. She put us on a tight budget. Which meant eating a lot of macaroni and cheese. It took her two years to save enough money for us to travel to Disneyland by Greyhound Bus!!!! But, by golly, we did it!! We stopped to see the Grand Canyon, Carlsbad Caverns, and went through as many states as we could and were sure to put our feet in any new body of water. Eventually, we put our feet in all five Great Lakes, as well as the Atlantic, the Pacific, and the Gulf of Mexico.

Through her eyes, I learned to see the beauty of God’s creation, the majestic mountains, the power of the oceans, and the mystery of furry little animals that scurry about building their homes and caring for their young.

Not long after my sister and I were married, she looked at us with that glint in her eye. “Now,” she said, “it is time for me to travel to all the continents.” She posed the question. “Where do you think I am going first?” No doubt in my mind, surely it was Europe. Nope. My sister and I went through all the likely continents until we finally came to the last one. Antarctica?!! Why would anyone want to go there? She smiled. “I want to see the penguins in their natural habitat.”

My sister and I burst out laughing. Of course, that’s mom!

Though, I have no idea of the total impact my mother has made on me, I know God picked her for me. He knew what this scrappy little girl needed!!

Looking back, I realize that not everything I leaned came through big things or cataclysmic events. Being a mom is hard work and it is long work. It is not a project that you can whip up in a month or two and be done. It takes years of work!!! Much of what we do is routine, unseen, and often goes unthanked. One of the things I learned through just watching my mom was how she responded to life. She never complained about being deaf or having a failed marriage. She did not complain about living in the projects or bemoan that we were poor. I just figured we probably were because we lived in the projects while many of our friends lived in homes and had cars.

Instead, what I saw was a real live, everyday person…get up everyday and go to work. Who made the best of things and did not let circumstances like her deafness, having no car or phone become the reason she could not pursue her life’s dream of travel. She loves God’s creation and passed her passion on to me. More importantly, she gave us limits. We knew there was a right and wrong, we also knew there were consequences for our choices. No more painting with red fingernail polish!!

For you moms, who are still in the trenches…hang in there. Remember your mom and draw upon the wisdom and strength of God. Be faithful in the mundane. For there are no “ordinary people or ordinary things.” For the world around us, including our little munchkins are expressions of the creativity of God. As C.S. Lewis says in his Letters to Malcolm, “A row of cabbages, a farmyard cat, a wrinkled motherly face, a tiled roof, a single sentence in a book…each can be seen as a tiny revelation of God as Creator. Just as fragments of sunlight break through dark wood, so parts of creation seen for what they are act as patches of Godlight in the world.”

Let’s take this time to remember our moms and what we have learned from them.

For those who are no longer mommies or never have been a mom, we are given the opportunity to be spiritual moms. May we create holes in our earthly existence through which little or big eyes can view God. May God give us grace to be “patches of Godlight” through which others can see God!! Remember the words of Mother Teresa, “I don’t do big things, I do small things with big love.”

Happy Mother’s Day!!

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