squashed banana, rolled eyes and dust parties

Tonight as the grey water drained away at my sink, leftover pieces of onion, celery and cheerio’s lay drowning in its wake, my eyes rolled as I forced my hand in to scoop them into the bin. Lately, a short, little sentence has been dancing around the inside of my mind.

To be served or to serve?

Ouch.

Motherhood can be just so ordinary, squashed bananas in my four hundred dollar rug, dust parties with leftover grout and tile glue, my ordinary is so very ordinary. Just like you.

I’m not wanting to complain but I struggle so often to find my place of peace, where I can accept my today with grace and fortitude. Some months it comes so easily and others, well let’s say tomorrow is another day.

I know this question isn’t one that is difficult to answer just for Mums of small children. It is for wives, for daughters, for friends, it is something that we all wrestle with on a daily basis.

When the dishes are left piling at the work sink, to be served or to serve?

When someone does something that you have been longing to do, to be served or to serve?

Being human is a call to service. Yet we live in a culture and an age that preaches constantly to us about entitlement. We are entitled to dream, we are entitled to live big lives, we are entitled to a fair go.

The more I see the age of entitlement grow, the more I am realising that it is causing a deep dissatisfaction in the ordinary parts of our lives. We see windows into our online friend’s worlds and we compare every moment, every filter and every follower with our own.

To be served or to serve?

What a profound question. As I stand in the queue at the post office like I did today with my not yet two-year-old screaming for the Peppa Pig Book placed right in her eyesight. As I pick her up and she kicks me ferociously, “To be served or to serve?”

As I sat down tonight to write, stealing a quiet moment after dinner and I hear my family gather on the couch to read a book and all I want to do is ignore it because Daddy is home and it’s now my time. “To be served or to serve?” So I quietly put my computer to sleep and walked out to the couch knowing that this time is precious and irreplaceable.

When the washing pile stinks and the dishwasher lay unpacked, when the sheets need to be changed and the floor cries to be swept.

To be served or to serve.

In a society that tells us what our rights are and how we need to look out for ourselves to find our peace. It is through serving another that humility, grace, patience and fortitude they grow, they manifest and they change our very core.

In a society that preaches the self-made man and the girl boss who wins. When I listened to the news this morning the preacher said “I don’t believe you go find yourself, I believe we need to make ourselves” how do we find perspective and grace when we are surrounded by pressure to live successfully by making ourselves seem amazing?

What if the mark of a successful person was the way they served those closest?

What if the most impressive attribute of a CEO was the way they treated their staff?

What if the person who served the most was the one with the most likes on social media?

What if our politicians spent their days seeing their role of one of service to humanity rather than a privilege?

What if we taught our children the way to win was to let another go before?

To be served or to serve?

I find myself lately realigning what impresses me and it is no longer stats, or numbers, people following or attendance, I am impressed by the way those in privileged places serve in the quiet moments with no spotlight. How they chat with people who cannot help them. If they dismiss and ignore the forgotten, the lonely and misrepresented.

I am watching the leaders as they walk slowly through their supermarket aisles.

I am aching to see leaders serve with a heart that is not impressed by status or what the world deems successful.

I am desperate to see a culture that teaches our young that it is indeed better to serve than to be served.

So for tonight as I put away my computer and snuggle up to my husband. When I sweep the floor and pick up those dirty clothes. As I wash another load and I listen for my children’s cries tonight deep in the dark of winter.

Please, Lord, continue to echo in my broken heart to be served or to serve.

Amen