Martha

I’m just so glad you’re here. 

Life is all train times and packed bags and task lists and oven timers. No time to rest, no time to eat, just flying on cortisol and green tea. 

Chasing the false gospel that when all is complete, when all is prepared and prepped and ready and tastes perfect and looks amazing, I will be at peace. 

I’m never at peace. I’m either on the hamster wheel, or at your feet. 

I wouldn’t be roasting these potatoes if you hadn’t been born, unnoticed by most except a crowd as unexpected as you. 

I wouldn’t be spraying perfume and hooking earrings if you hadn’t entered this world covered in blood and body, crying as we all were. 

I wouldn’t be fretting about whether the Brussels sprouts were crispy enough had you not made the decision to descend. If you hadn’t come down to meet us in our rushing, and never enough, and endless plans and fleeting purpose. 

And as I sit on this train, finally forced to be still, I am fighting the urge to keep working, keep organising, keep communicating and planning and lining everything up and making it all perfect. 

But it won’t be perfect. Life is lemons falling out of my bag in the middle of an intersection, my coat coming undone as I hurry to grab them and dropping more. A lot of work for nothing really that consequential. 

Food will be eaten. Conversations will be had. Memories will be made. Another Christmas will come and go. 

But you never do. 

Jesus, let me not rush past you. Restrain my hands from becoming Martha’s, my mind addicted to the rush of productivity as I indulge in the delicacies of feeling self-sufficient. 

I am a lemon in the middle of the intersection, Jesus. I can’t save myself. 

And here, in this straight jacket of a train, where time isn’t measured by tasks, there is nothing for me to reach for except you. 

Oh, you! 

I remember you. 

You’re the reason I breathe. 

And how glorious it is to stop, 

melt into weakness at your feet 

and enjoy you. 

Jesus, I’m just so glad you’re here.