Love Is Not a Transaction

My daughter Sabina is 8 years old, and she is… a lot.  We affectionately call her “Miss Piggy”, because she’s blond, blue eyed, SUPER girly, and glamorous.  Every day she dresses herself to the nines in pink, sequins, glitter and bows; she loves unicorns and mermaids.  But, like Miss Piggy, she will also karate chop you in half if she thinks you’re messing with her.  She colored a sign that hangs on the door of her room with bright, colorful stars, hearts, and rainbows, and in the middle she wrote, “knock or I will kick you in the crotch”.  That’s my Sabina.  My husband describes her as a princess in need of an exorcism. 

For Sabina’s birthday we took a family trip up to our beach house in Sequim, Washington.  While she was sleeping I decorated the house with pink balloons and streamers and hanging stars; I bought her barbies and the new sheets she wanted, and a new toy box, and wrapped them in unicorn and mermaid wrapping paper.  We had her favorite pizza for dinner and a cupcake party on the beach.  And I was feeling very good about myself, for making this day so special for her.  I gave myself a gold star for A+ mommying. 

Playing on the beach after the cupcake party, my kiddos wanted to go in the ocean, even though it was a chilly day.  And I gave them my standard Mommy Spiel: “It’s awfully cold.  If you go in the water, you’ll probably feel pretty uncomfortable, and we’re far away from the car, so I won’t have a way to get you warmed up quickly.  So, knowing that, you can make your own decision about whether you want to go in the water or not”. 

Sabina, of course, went in the water. 

She splashed and had fun for about 20 minutes before coming out, as predicted, shivering and miserable.  Through chattering teeth she said, “Mommy, I’m FREEZING”, and I replied, “yeah, I’m not surprised, you went in the water and it’s really cold, and we talked about that, right, so you kind of knew this was the deal”. 

Whoops.

Sabina marched right up to me on that beach, stuck both her arms out and shoved me as hard as she could until I fell backwards, straight into the water.

Chaos.  Now Sabina was crying and getting a stern talking-to from Dad, while I was trying to stand back up, soaked and miserable, and feeling very sorry for myself, thinking, “but…but… I stayed up till 1:00am decorating for you… I gave you a cupcake party on the beach… I BOUGHT YOU A 3-STORY BARBIE DREAMHOUSE THAT IS WAY NICER THAN THE ONE I HAD WHEN I WAS LITTLE!” 

But this, of course, is one of the grim realities of motherhood: we don’t necessarily get back what we put in, because love is not a barter system.  And motherhood isn’t a transaction.  I’ve put in all my time, my energy, my very heart; endured countless sleepless nights, wrecked my body, cried so many tears, suffered the impossible, given my all for the sake of raising this little person, and what I get back is an angry, ticked-off little girl that shoves me, hard. 

Mother love is painful like that.  You can pour out all of your heart for your child, dedicate your whole life to them, and maybe they don’t even see the gift that you’ve tried so hard to give them.   

Perhaps this grief is something like the sorrow that Jesus would have felt when he walked this earth.  He came to give us love, and mercy, a glimpse of Heaven; something much more special than even a 3-story Barbie dreamhouse, and we rejected him.  In John’s Gospel we read, “[Jesus] was in the world, and the world came into being through Him, and yet the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and His own people did not accept Him” (John 1:10-11).  The beauty and light that Jesus sought to bring into this world were utterly rejected, even by some of the very people he loved most. 

I wonder if that surprised him?  If Jesus felt sad and dumbfounded during his time here, because he was trying to give us something beautiful of himself, and we hated him for it.  I wonder if he felt kind of like I did on the beach that day, soaking wet and hurt that all I had tried to do to make my little girl feel special and happy wasn’t enough to buy me unlimited “world’s best Mommy” points.  I think Jesus intimately understands this tough reality of mothering; that’s it’s not fair, that what we “deserve” for all our hard work and effort almost never comes to fruition.  And I’m comforted when I think that Jesus knows exactly what it is to give all of yourself, your very life, and pour out all of your love upon someone who might ultimately choose to disregard it.  The miracle is that Jesus kept on loving us anyway.   

And that, of course, was how my story with Sabina ended, too:  she apologized, and we hugged, trudging back to the car together, wet and dripping.  My love for my feisty little firecracker never stopped, not even for a moment, and it never will.