Tiny Steps Toward Sanctity
By Rebekah Mead
I had everything I would need for a month in Madagascar. Sleeping bag, vitamins, hiking boots - check, check, check. How lucky that my old advisor was letting me tag along! I had studied abroad with her in undergrad but never thought that I’d have a chance to go back. In just a couple hours, I would leave for the airport and begin my grand adventure. But wait… would my baby be ok for that long without me? Was it fair to leave my husband to take care of him? My elation dissolved into dismay.
I woke up to my heart pounding and my baby beginning to stir. It had been a dream: there was no grand adventure ahead of me, only another day of diaper changes, naptime wrestling matches, and shuffling around the house holding my son’s hands. (At nine months old, he’d developed the will, but not yet the coordination, to walk on his own.)
The baby blues were behind me, but I couldn’t shake a creeping bitterness that was now poisoning even my dreams. I loved my son and always regretted spending more than a few hours apart from him. Why then did a part of me still long for something more exciting, noble, and noteworthy?
Motherhood had brought me more joy than I could have imagined, but it also felt mundane. Like St. Thérèse of Lisieux, I felt the call of more thrilling vocations - if not to be a martyr, at least to be a missionary, a humanitarian, or even a researcher in the rainforests of Madagascar.
Many saints, by their words and examples, have taught us about the greatness of the calling to motherhood.
My own heart echoed the truth of their teachings, yet in moments of soreness, messiness, and mind-numbing repetition, my daily duties felt anything but great.
One day, as I supported my son’s shaky steps from the living room to the front door and back again, the repetition (not unlike that of rote prayer) finally gave way to deeper reflection. If I were a physical therapist helping an athlete or veteran to walk again after an injury, I would consider that great and noble work. Helping my son to walk for the first time was no less so! Cleaning the wounds of lepers would be saintly and heroic; cleaning my baby’s diapers every day required its own kind of heroism. And wouldn’t I consider it a high honor to teach my language and culture to a visiting foreign diplomat? Surely it would be an even higher honor to teach them to my own son.
Something shifted in me that day; the bitterness that had crept into my soul like a choking vine began to lose its hold. While I still have many imperfections to uproot, I continue to find nobility and renewed excitement in my vocation as a mother. I may no longer be able to volunteer at an inner city soup kitchen, but I can feed my son, in a beautifully Christ-like way, from my own body. I can’t take off on a spring break service trip to build houses in poor communities, but in a much more intimate way, I have built a shelter in my womb and now in my arms. Traveling to a foreign country as a missionary or humanitarian would feel like an exhilarating dream. Instead, I am called to a better reality: to bring God’s love to my family and provide for my child’s physical and spiritual needs.
“God would never inspire me with desires which cannot be realized,” St. Thérèse wrote in her autobiography, The Story of a Soul. As I navigated this new chapter of motherhood, the weight of seemingly unrealized desires used to fill me with dread. I needed to step back - literally, to follow in the footsteps of a child - to recognize that God offers the fulfillment of my desires right where I am.
Innumerable vocations are folded into the simple title of Mother: missionary, teacher, trainer, linguist, nurse, counselor, chef, scientist… the list goes on. As my family grows, so will the fields in which I am called to serve.
“So in spite of my littleness,” St. Thérèse continued, “I can hope to be a saint.” In motherhood, it’s easy to get mired in the littleness and lose sight of the greatness hidden in the humble. The kingdom hides in the mustard seed, and God Himself is hidden in the appearance of bread.
Holiness hides in the most superficially mundane duties. Caring for one tiny human will not send me flying across the globe on a noble mission, but it does require as much passion, grit, and self-denial as the most thrilling adventure I can imagine. Most importantly, it is my calling, my path to sainthood, and it is made even more exciting by the tiny feet that are learning to walk alongside me.
