Everyone is crying.
Multiply me, Lord.
The house is a wreck and messes grow like weeds, faster than I can tend to them.
Multiply me, Lord.
It’s need after need after need and when do I rest?
When did you rest?
You went away up the mountain for a moment of peace, and they followed you. Your heart wasn’t bitter with frustration and you didn’t sigh in exasperation at their constant neediness. Your eyes didn’t well with tears like water leaving a wrung out sponge, leaving you dry, stiff, and cracked.
Your heart, Matthew says, was moved with pity.
Well, Lord, I am not you in this story.
I am the bread. The dried out, crusty leftovers without a prayer of fulfilling the needs of the crowd. My crowd is small, Lord, but they are hungry. Hungry for loving arms to reassure them, for smiles to encourage them, for eyes to witness small feats with wonder, for arms to wrap safety around them.
My body is tired and weak. “I am not enough,” I want to say ten times a day. Lord, multiply me, I pray.
I pray wondering when grace will kick in, until I realize it isn’t coming.
It’s already here.
Multiply me. What does this prayer mean?
It means being broken and given. This is my body given for you. This is my life given for you. No one takes it from me. I lay it down for these sweet, beautiful faces and impossibly soft skin. I lay it down for the wonder that they are, and the privilege to watch them grow. This deafening chaos is my gift to savor in the present moment. The stretching and the breaking - these are the answers to my pleas.
It is all too much and I am not enough. My not-enoughness makes room, provides the space for me to cry to you, to place myself in your hands. It is here I am broken bit by bit. It is your hand that gives me away, and it is for me to trust the mystery of your love that distributes me. In your hands I become so much more than what I am. I am given and given and given away, and in the end, so much more than what I once was is leftover.
I am not enough. I’m not meant to be.
Multiply me, Lord.
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My toddler is screaming, so it must be Tuesday. His face is scrunched, anger etching hard lines onto his normally round face. His complexion flushes red as he hisses out a frustrated, “No,” through clenched teeth.
It isn’t a refusal to acquiesce to my request. Quite the opposite: his is a refusal to accept my refusal.
Except, I haven’t said, “No.” What I said was, “Not right now.”