An Ancient, Fertile Soil

Featured in the “More Organic Than It May Appear:” A Symposium on Creativity and Motherhood, Mary, Queen of Angels 2021 issue of Dappled Things.

I live with my family on a small plot of land in Oregon that was built atop a geological marvel: thousands of years ago, the Missoula ice floods swept over this region, creating the Willamette Valley. It is the silt from this ancient glacier that ever after has fed this valley, and coupled with a long rainy season, has made the land here fertile and yielding. The valley is a patchwork of corn fields, grass, hops, and hazelnut trees; the surrounding hills are home to sloping vineyards. Life here is ordered by the seasons: we invariably watch the farmers perform their timely tasks through the year. The landscape is an education in and of itself, a constant reminder of the cooperation between God’s creation and human toil which produces the fruit of our table. 

We live in an inconsequential town within the valley, stalled between suburbia and mission outpost—the kind of town a passer-by might miss as they drive through its one intersection. It’s quite ordinary, a word I never imagined would describe my life. I used to think ordinary was synonymous with monotonous boredom, and indeed someone might see my life as such: my days are filled with seemingly mindless tasks like dishes, laundry, and yardwork. Every year I plant the same plants around the same time, and my young children squat with me in the muddy, fertile soil to bury each seed. But this is the secret within what is ordered: the repetition of something doesn’t make it less of a marvel. A thrilled squeal of glee and wonder rises from my young children as soon as the seeds begin to sprout. They’ve seen it before and they will see it again, but it’s always new. In this ancient, fertile soil, the seed is hidden from sight and emerges transformed. What we laid to rest has come to life. While this is a wonder to them now, I know there is an eternal truth here they will cherish later.

I could not always see the wonder and beauty in what is hidden. There was a time when I would have scoffed about living in a hidden town, performing hidden, monotonous tasks, or wanting my children to see beauty in the ordinary. Motherhood taught me this. I was admittedly unprepared to be a mother. When I realized I was pregnant with my first child, I was a thousand miles away from my husband on a business trip. I remember lying on the bed of a hotel room, staring up at the ceiling with my hand pressed to my flat belly, in awe that such a profound mystery was happening inside of me, completely hidden from my senses. In a way, it was unnerving that only God had known what my body was beginning while I, at least for a few weeks, had been wholly unaware. Yet from that realization came an invitation of surrender: though this wasn’t something my husband and I had planned, God saw that it was good. 

That first stage of motherhood—the assent—grew more difficult with each child. By my fourth pregnancy, I would find myself crying in a bathtub and telling God that I couldn’t possibly go through this again—this being the crucible of pregnancy and childbirth. While there was wisdom in recognizing I needed to take a break and rejuvenate—and a much needed break would follow—I recognized at that moment that I had allowed motherhood to take possession of my body, but not always with the full surrender of my will. There were aspects of motherhood that I was struggling to accept. My body was a stranger to me, its landscape scarred and rewritten with being peopled. Interiorly, much of what I had relied on for self-confidence had been stripped from me. My education had been shelved, and I was given tasks that I had little preparation for—cooking, cleaning, toddler discipline, and the like. These aspects of motherhood that I had thought would be easy and instinctual by merit of my biology were, as it turned out, much more challenging and, far from being instinctual, required prayerful, purposeful concentration. I felt like a failure; resentment caught up with me. I cried out to God for help: Give me the love I need to love this family you have given me. In the grace of that moment, I turned to the Blessed Mother, someone I had never fully given my heart to, and asked for assistance: Show me how to be a mother.

What followed was a slow and gradual transformation. During that fourth pregnancy, I reflected on how motherhood had hit upon a hidden wound: my addiction to praise. Throughout my life, whether in education or my profession, there had always been some kind of affirmation, but in the hiddenness of daily family life, there was no applause for laundry, no gold stars for fortitude in discipline, no awards for keeping children clean and fed. My vanity was starving. This vocation was my winnowing, a crucible, a daily dying to self. God was turning over and tilling the soil beneath me; it was unpleasant, painful, and necessary.

My discomfort with hiddenness demanded I contemplate Christ’s hiddenness. God had hidden himself in Mary’s womb where only she could adore Him. He hid himself in poverty: first in a manger, as an exile in Egypt, in Nazareth, then as a transient missionary. He hid himself in simple dress, though He was a king, and yet was the most visible in his wounded nakedness on a cross. He hid himself in death so that He could be glorified. And now He hides himself in the Eucharist, the tiny, seemingly inconsequential host that we are invited to consume. Within the hiddenness of our hearts, He is contented.

In this contemplation, it was to Nazareth that I continually returned, and the peaceful hamlet where Joseph, Mary, and the Christ-child spent much of their lives. I thought surely if I knew more about their mysterious home life, then I would solve the riddle of contentment in my own life. But I slowly realized it was less of a mystery and more of a simple truth: the daily life of the Holy Family was filled with the same monotonous tasks as my own. It was an ordered, disciplined life rooted in love and service of one another. Mary swept, cooked, planted, and toiled; Joseph worked long hours and calloused his hands; and if God had been humble enough to submit Himself to the monotony of daily life in a little home within an inconsequential town, then it was no burden for me, but a high calling. My eyes were opened: the ordinary life around me became beautiful, adorned with humility, and rooted in love-driven sacrifice.

The vocation of a mother no longer seemed insignificant because it was hidden; rather, I came to understand that motherhood was a path to holiness because it walks with Christ through conception, infancy, childhood, ministry, as well as His passion and death. The first time I felt a child move within me, I could not help but to think of Mary and what it must have been like to know that the Creator of the universe was hidden beneath her flesh; within her was the tiniest movement of the mightiest Being. Christ’s passion becomes tangible in labor, even down to the detail of language: Scripture speaks of a woman’s time to give birth and Christ’s passion as their hour. Labor is a passion, a crucible of my body which demands the surrender of my will. Once my child’s tiny body is delivered of mine, the light of resurrection dawns: at great cost, life comes into the world. When the blood and water flow from Christ’s side, a mother knows how this looks, smells, and feels—that torrent of birth. And, as Christ noted, I forget my anguish once the child is placed at my breasts, and I see the tangible love that has disfigured and wounded my body (John 16:21). It isn’t so much a forgetfulness that comes over me after birth, but a surrender, an acceptance: you have come into this world at great cost to me, but I would do it again for love of you. And it is this invitation of love that keeps bringing me back to that bloody, wrecked position from which comes life. A mother’s love is foolish that way. 

A woman’s opportunity to walk intimately through Christ’s life in motherhood lends itself to a unique way to perceive Mother Church. Before I became a mother, the Church as a body was more of a vague idea or a beautiful analogy. Now the Church as mother is tangible: I can see, smell, and hear what this means in my own life. I meditate on how we, as a Church body, must labor to bring forth life and the cost it requires, sometimes in martyrdom. When we are unjust and spiteful towards one another, these divisions pain the heart of Mother Church and tear at Her sacred body. As the state of my children’s souls and the state of their bodies are the primary concern of my heart, so our bodies and souls are the vocation of Mother Church, and it is to this end She must focus her energy. Like a mother, the Church cannot fear wounds and humiliation, but receive them for God’s glory. And as mothers die to themselves and walk with Christ along Calvary, so Mother Church walks with her spouse and savior towards Golgotha where She will be the most visible in her wounded nakedness—and it is in that most humble state that She draws humanity to Christ.

Motherhood is an ancient soil nourished by the ever-giving flood of Love Himself. It has been repeated through countless generations, perfected in Mary, and lived out daily in ordinary, hidden lives. But the repetition of something doesn’t make it less of a marvel; this is the wisdom of Nazareth, that the daily, monotonous tasks of life provide a fertile ground for growth. Twentieth century Catholic writer Adreinne von Speyr writes that “Nazareth... has doors and windows that open out into the Church. From this we ourselves learn first to order our lives behind closed doors and windows, until we too open them and place ourselves at the Church’s disposal” (Handmaid of the Lord). From the hiddenness of this home where my children are formed, they will emerge. Sometimes I grow anxious about what I cannot control for my children: the climate in which they grow, the weeds that grow alongside them and threaten to overshadow their goodness and beauty. Yet here is another season of motherhood that must be surrendered; it is a part of the first assent in receiving life within the womb: that first yes surrenders ultimate control and agrees to allow that soul to emerge from the protected, hidden life of the home to fully become who God intends them to be. My vocation is the here and now; it is here that I bleed, sweat, and toil. And just as motherhood has been my winnowing, so my children will toil and grow along the path of their own vocation atop the nourishing soil of Mother Church.