O'Brien: Is this what we’re supposed to be doing?

BY DAVID O'BRIEN

Ok, so I go to work, come home, go to work, come home. Drive the kids to practice for the Christmas play. Kiss my wife as she rushes out to the next thing. Catch her words as she flies down the driveway. Evidently, there is a list for me on the kitchen counter.

The dishes are still in the sink from this morning. Before we know it, the time has come to pick up the kids. A late dinner, a little homework, carry the baby while my wife punches out a priority email and then we are into the bedtime routine.

Even after the kids are down, three hours of work lie before us. We hope to be in bed by midnight.

The thing that bothers me is that I know it all starts again tomorrow. In fact, the weeks, months and years are blurring together these days, obscured by the onslaught of daily tasks that never get conquered but instead seem to breed somewhere in the back room of our house.

Wasn’t it just yesterday that we were on our honeymoon, the world lie before us and we were dreaming about all the great things we could accomplish together? Now, married with four children, a mortgage, leaky faucets, a house begging for a paint job, stacks of administrative work piled up on my desk, I wonder: "Is this what we’re supposed to be doing with our lives?"

Already, we see the window closing as we reach our forties. Where did our youth go? The years are flying by so fast. Did we miss something along the way?

My sisters are farther down the road than us. They have children in high school and college. When we talk, they are asking the same questions. We commiserate in our shared search for answers and meaning in the midst of the daily doings of family life.

This morning I awoke at 3:00 a.m. My daughter’s baptism is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. The list of to-do’s is racing through my mind, disturbing my sleep. I try to calm my thoughts, breathing deeply, fi xing my focus on the Lord, offering my little girl into His loving arms. I feel the tightness in my hands recede and I slide into a half conscious state, somewhere between distraction, peaceful slumber and meditation.

My mind recounts the story my wife told me earlier in the week. She is holding our baby girl who is playing Jesus in a live Nativity scene in front of our church. A man approaches my wife. Not a parishioner, he appears shy, awkwardly slow and a little bit off. She is cautious at first but notices the innocence in his eyes. He asks her in all sincerity: "Can I see the baby Jesus?" She watches in awe as his face beams with profound joy, staring at the holy child, our daughter.

At the baptism, I look around at the room full of friends, parents, grandparents, godparents, children, children, children and a baby dressed in a white gown. The dress is made of fabric given to us by a women we know who lives on a garbage dump outside of Mexico City. She presented us with the material as a gift for sponsoring her daughter, who died of multiple sclerosis. Somehow, I imagine her questions about the meaning of life are different than mine. For her, all of life is a gift and she is grateful, even on a garbage dump, even though her daughter died. I pray that her spirit characterizes our family in the years ahead.

On the baptismal font sits the bowl that carried the Eucharistic bread at our wedding. A friend made it for us as a wedding gift. It has been the basin for the baptisms of each of our children.

The priest prays over us that we would be good parents to our daughter and help her know the Lord’s love for her. Surrounded by God’s grace, we feel more like lottery winners at that moment than the overwrought couple we thought we were a week ago.

At the little reception in the parish hall, my wife’s mother and brother sing "O Holy Night" followed by a trio of spiritual songs performed by my older kids, songs they learned at all those play rehearsals I drove them to night after night. They sit on a table and belt out in full voice: "I’d rather have Jesus than silver and gold." My sisters wipe the tears from their eyes and smile at me.

I’m not sure what I thought we were supposed to be doing with our lives but when I pay attention to what we are doing, I’m tempted to say these ordinary, mundane, every day, monotonous demanding elements of family life might just be holy.

I doubt the history books and the New York Times will seek to immortalize 99.9% of our lives. But God is paying attention and I’m starting to think God is doing something extraordinary, even if we are too distracted, busy and preoccupied to notice most of the time.

About David O’Brien David O’Brien is the Associate Director of Religious Education for Lay Ministry for the Archdiocese of Mobile. His column, Everyday Faith, appears regularly in the archdiocesan newspaper, the Catholic Week. Email David at dobrien@mobilearchdiocese.org.