“Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices
as much as in obeying the Lord?
To obey is better than sacrifice,
and to heed is better than the fat of rams.”
– 1 Samuel 15:22
A pile of odds and ends, the leavings of the day, sit at the base of our stairs like a pile of rubble after a domestic avalanche of orphaned shoes, Hot Wheels, and broken pieces of chalk. This is the “go back” pile: the pile of items designated to be returned upstairs after I have whisked them off the floor in a speed clean session inspired by the Tasmanian Devil.
The pile sits silently mocking me as I give it a good, long stare. This is the pile my daughter is assigned to rehome at the end of every day. At eight, she is fairly dependable, normally thrives on the thrill of completing her chores checklist, and in her more generous moments, even does extra chores just to make me smile. In fact, today is one of those days. She has cleared the toys off the living room floor, fluffed the couch pillows, and folded laundry – all unbidden. The one thing she hasn’t done is clear the pile from the bottom of the stairs.
The one thing I asked her to do.
And I can’t even be frustrated because when I think to myself, “She did everything except what I asked her to do,” somewhere in the back of my mind is a niggling voice that whispers,
Just like you.
It’s not an angry voice. It’s merely stating a fact, one I know at this moment to be true.
I am going to deviate from my norm here and share something personal, and that’s actually not a joke, because although I am always sharing personal stories in these reflections, they are always meant to point the listener to God. They are stories about me, but they aren’t really about me.
This little insight I’m about to share is more narrowly directed at me, but I want to share with you because some of you might be joining us for the first time as listeners from my other podcast and Substack newsletter, Brave New Us, which I recently wrapped production on despite it finally gaining traction after four years of stop-and-go labor. Why leave now, after 16,000 YouTube views, 13,000 podcast downloads, and 4,000 substack subscribers. Why abandon ship?
I might be a bit dense, but began to sense that this was one of the many chores God did not ask me to do.
It was beautiful. It was important. It feels unfinished and it is honestly still a project I’d like to pick and continue – one day.
But that pile on the stairs hit me like a ton of bricks.
I had a queue of reflections in my mind that was two years long. For two years, I had been collecting the stories for this podcast for someday. In the meantime, I busied myself freelance writing, drafting book proposals, expanding my newsletter offerings, and taking the podcast to YouTube.
Someone had once told me that the bioethics “stuff” was like my job, and the Mama Prays stuff was like my hobby. And somewhere in there, I started to believe that, and to behave accordingly. I had forgotten the burning in my heart when I read the words of John Paul II:
“Do you think that there can be anything greater than to bring Jesus to people and people to Jesus?”
And on the one hand, that is the call of every Christian. In a particular way, that is the call of mothers (and fathers for that matter), for the children each of us are given. But when I read those words, I felt a tug on my heart to share the stories I’d been hoarding in my head since one very trying day at Mass.
It was not the day I spoke about two episodes ago – we have a lot of trying days at Mass.
No, this was the day when my 2-year-old decided to make a break for it in response to his own personal altar call. The entire assembly gasped as my son ran the length of the right side of the church up the wheelchair ramp to the elevated stage on which sat the altar. I walked as swiftly as I could with a baby strapped to my chest to head him off before he got to where he could do some real damage. If this was a more artsy parish, his antics might have passed for a skit, because the gospel that day was - I kid you not - the parable of the lost son.
It doesn’t end there. Upon retrieving my son from his mad dash up the aisle, I yanked him outside for some cool down time. For me.
Now, he is what some parents affectionately call a “runner,” and has no sense of anxiety about being far from us. We have since procured a tracking device that he wears around his wrist to keep tabs on our little runaway, but that day, we were just one the verge of discovering the need.
I let him walk a bit ahead of me on the path outside of the church. He took these gains as a sign to run faster and farther, and my heart stopped when he rounded the corner nearest the street. I ran full-on to catch up, but by the time I made it around the corner, he was out of sight. I will spare you the terror of the moments that followed; I eventually found him hiding on a bench in an alcove outside the adoration chapel.
And as I walked back to my pew after receiving communion that day, I felt that tug on my heart. This was what I was supposed to do: share these stories with you, share the ways God is touching my heart through my children. How I lost my son on the parable of the Lost Son. I knew my calling.
And so naturally, I folded the laundry and fluffed the pillows.
Of course, we all do this at times. A thing doesn’t have to be wrong for it to be sinful – as long as it's done at the wrong time, in the wrong way, in the wrong amount, with the wrong person, etc. Who hasn’t scrolled social media when you should have been doing something else? Who hasn’t procrastinated or left something important undone?
And this is where I was getting it wrong. Because it isn’t just choosing the thousand things you weren’t asked to do over your duty that’s wrong. It’s that saying “Not right now” isn’t an appropriate response to God. Just as I can delay my children’s requests, but they don’t have the authority to choose when they carry out their duties (unless I allow it), so do we as children of God have the obligation to respond to his call when we hear it.
And Jesus actually said that. When he called some men to be his disciples, we know that the Apostles dropped what they were doing and followed him. But others made excuses to delay: first, let me bury my father. First, let me say goodbye to my family. And these are good things to do. But what Jesus says, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom..no one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom.” (Luke 9:57-62).
Delayed obedience is disobedience. To be clear, there are mitigating circumstances. In my case, there was a lot going on that made things murky and difficult to discern. But that still doesn’t negate the fact that when Jesus calls, the call is for right now. Delayed obedience is disobedience.
That is tough news for me, but I am here now, ready to cling to the parable about the workers who entered the vineyard late, but still received the same reward (Matt 20:1-16), and the one about the son who told his father he wouldn’t work, but then turned around and did his father’s will (Matt 21:28-31).
Even now, it might be the case that I am still not fully following Jesus’s call for me. I do not know for certain, and if I did know for certain, there would be room for faith.
So to close, I will share with you one of my favorite prayers, particularly for times like these. It is a prayer by Thomas Merton:
My Lord God,
I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
nor do I really know myself,
and the fact that I think I am following your will
does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please you
does in fact please you.
And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.
And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road,
though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore will I trust you always though
I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.
I will not fear, for you are ever with me,
and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.
Amen