Loving without Labor
Posted by Arwen Mosher in FaithHomemaking on Thursday, July 10, 2008 12:21 PM
On Monday we had some friends over for dinner, newlyweds who will soon be moving across the country. When my husband invited them, he announced that we’d get take-out, since I’m constantly nauseated these days due to my first-trimester status.
Under normal circumstances I enjoy cooking for guests. Preparing food is fun for me and I relish my friends’ happy reactions to the food I’ve made. But during the first trimester I am practically useless in the kitchen: five minutes standing over a stove and I’m reaching for the nearest chair, white-faced and nauseated, or, worse yet, lunging for the sink.
So I swallowed my desire to impress (also known as my pride) and when our friends arrived I greeted them with the menu from our favorite sub shop rather than with the smells of home-cooked food. I felt a little like I was failing, but I tried to ignore it. Bryan had insisted on take-out, after all, and the subs were delicious.
It wasn’t until after we’d spent a happy evening with our friends and they’d gone home that I realized I’d been a much better hostess because I hadn’t tried to cook dinner. If I’d prepared and served a meal I would have been stretched and exhausted. But because I didn’t have to focus my mind on the various details of making dinner (and on managing not to lose my own lunch in the process), I was able to focus on our friends and the things they had to say, and make the evening a more relaxed, enjoyable experience for all of us.
It occurred to me later that by insisting on take-out, Bryan had provided me not with an excuse but with an opportunity. There is much value in laboring for those we love, but sometimes Christ calls us to rest, to set aside the labor so that we can love all the better because we are undistracted. After Monday’s experience I have resolved that the next time my husband insists we’ll get take-out, I’m going to embrace the chance. For one evening I’ll let him make the yoke easy and the burden light for me, and I’ll be a Mary instead of a Martha. And maybe that’ll bring me one step closer to letting Christ do the same for me all the time.
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