Finding JOY

For over a year now Catherine has belonged to Little Flowers, which is a Catholic girls group that meets monthly to study a specific saint and an associated virtue. This past Friday when I picked her up she presented me with a Christmas ornament she had decorated and solemnly informed me the ornament should remind us to be joyful. "The way to be joyful," she explained, pointing to the large J-O-Y running down one side of the ornament as an acronym, "is to remember that joy comes from serving Jesus, Others, and then Yourself."

Fast-forward an hour. I'm struggling to get the coconut-crusted tilapia in the oven, the asparagus roasted, the potatoes baked. Dominic is running around naked, the dog is yapping at squirrels, Vincent is trying to tell me his idea for some complicated boat that involves motors and propellers and sails and do I think we can build it right now? Meanwhile, my joyful little angel is writhing on the kitchen floor swearing that she is about to expire from hunger, because, after all, the ONLY snacks she had this afternoon were frosted cupcakes, iced petit fours and two bowls of popcorn at Little Flowers.

Then -- miraculously -- dinner is ready, and I drop her plate on the table and tell her she doesn't have to wait for the rest of us to eat.

And what does she do? She becomes very, very quiet and just sits there.

And Vincent gets out the balsa wood to start building his boat.

And Dominic takes his clothes off once again.

"Mommy?" Catherine says. "I don't want to eat yet."

"Well, then go find your brother's clothes before he pees on the couch."

"At Little Flowers we learned that joy comes from serving others before you serve yourself, and I just got served first. I'm going to wait and make sure everyone else is served before I eat."

Yipes. It was one of those moments when the world slows to a crawl, when a naked toddler and a mess of balsa wood and glue doesn't seem to matter because your child is teaching you something far more important than your own distracted rushing. Something about what really matters -- joy.

Even if she doesn't quite understand what is meant by "serve."

"You know," I said, sitting beside her at the table, "'serve' doesn't mean just serving people at dinner."

Shock. "It doesn't?"

"Serving means doing things for others. It means thinking of what others need before you do things for yourself."

"So I can go ahead and eat my dinner?"

"Yes."

"Good. Because I was really starving."

But it sunk in, because that night she announced she was going to spend the next day serving others, starting with raking the neighbors' leaves while they were out of town.

"And I want to bake gingerbread cookies for our neighbors," Vincent chimed in. "And then build my boat."

Fine.

Saturday, 7:11 a.m. I'm enjoying a quiet morning, drinking my coffee. All the kids are asleep -- until I hear, "Can we bake the gingerbread now?" and Vincent stumbles out in his Spiderman pjs holding an arm across his eyes.

Ummmm... no. Let me reiterate -- I'm enjoying my quiet morning. I'm not interested in cracking eggs and flouring the kitchen floor. And anyway, I have about 3,792 things I need to do today. "How about TV?" I ask.

"No. Gingerbread. You said we could serve others."

So we do the gingerbread, and then Catherine gets out everyone's boots (never mind that it's 60 degrees) so we can go rake. Luckily we discover that we own four rakes so we can avoid fights. But having an au natural yard (read= no raking) means I don't have a clue how long it takes to rake a normal-sized yard. Hours. And then some, because as soon as we finish raking the wind comes along and drops another carpet of leaves on the grass.

As the boys depart for haircuts after lunch, Catherine looks out the window at the neighbors' yard and says, "I think we need to rake some more."

Very little gets accomplished on my task list that day. I'm too busy baking gingerbread cookies and raking leaves. The laundry piles up, the dishwasher sits unloaded. Our own yard badly needs some attention. The dog needs a walk.

But the kids are happy. And Catherine, as she tells me that night, is joyful.

And you know what? So was I. Because although I got nothing done -- nothing that I had deemed important, anyway -- the kids, through their desire to serve others, had given me an opportunity to serve them. And that, as my daughter reminded me the night before, is what joy is all about.