Eating as a social event ...

As a mom, I spend a lot of time preparing food. Most days the kids and I have 3 square meals together around the table. Tom usually gets to join us for at least one.

Phoebe refuses to eat alone. She has to have somebody sitting with her. She will settle for her brother in a high chair, but she usually insists on having me right next to her. If I am still in the kitchen or trying to get a load of laundry in the dryer, she'll persistently tell me to, "Sit down Mommy! Mommy eat!"

I've been ruminating on her dislike to eat alone --- or anyone's dislike to eat alone for that matter. Since infancy, meals are a social event. As a baby nurses, he is pressed up against his mother looking her in the eyes. Or if an infant takes a bottle she is still in the arms of a trusted adult interacting and making connections. Once a baby graduates to table food, he still needs someone else to help him eat: to be near.

To eat is to commune with others. Maybe this is why important holidays include a feast of some sort. Maybe this is why we ask new friends to join us for a meal. Maybe this is why God invites us to the Table to partake of the gift of His Son.

I love that when we share eternity with the Father, Son, and Spirit it will be at a huge banquet table with good food, good friends, and good conversation. We will never have to eat alone. Phoebe will LOVE that.

Spiritual Disciplines as a busy mom ...

As a kid, I remember time creeping by. The minute hand took years to get to it's destination for recess. Christmas was a decade away in November. My birthday seemed to happen once a century.

Now I wake up, change a few diapers, fix a little food, maybe get a load of laundry done, and poof it's bed time. The hours race by me leaving me feeling dizzy and a bit disoriented. I often ask, "Where did that day go?"

So in a day that lasts a minute, when do I find time to practice the spiritual disciplines: prayer, study, solitude, etc.?

My experiment of the last couple of months looks something like this ... I've let the lines of the spiritual and the everyday blur. For example, at the breakfast table Phoebe and I read the lectionary passages intermittently with her children's Bible story book. She loves to pray for her family and friends by name. While I throw a load of laundry in the dryer I try to contemplate the scripture we read in the morning. During nap time I sit for at least ten minutes in just the quiet. When we go on walks I try to remember to celebrate God's creation. If I wrong one of my children, I confess it to them even if they don't understand.

I'm realizing God fully knows the demands of motherhood. He doesn't expect us to grow in spite of our circumstances, but uniquely through them.

Friend how do you incorporate faith in the everyday?