Anne Lamott

When my daughter was first born, a friend recommended that I read Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year by Anne Lamott. I was finally able to find it from the library. I wish I had found it earlier--my baby is almost one years old, and I wish I had been able to have Lamott's book as my warning beforehand and my companion throughout this first year. A glowing review will follow when I finish it, but last night I was particularly struck by a passage. Lamott wonders if she is crazy to have ever believed in Jesus and then she recounts this experience:

Then something truly amazing happened. A man from church showed up at our front door, smiling and waving to me and Sam ... after exchanging pleasantries he said, "Margaret and I wanted to do something for you and the baby. So what I want to ask is, What if a fairy appeared on your doorstep and said that he or she would do any favor for you at all, anything you wanted around the house that you felt too exhausted to do by yourself and too ashamed to ask anyone else to help you with?"

"I can't even say," I said. "It's too horrible."

But he finally convinced me to tell him, and I said it would be to clean the bathroom, and he ended up spending an hour scrubbing the bathtub and toilet and sink with Ajax and lots of hot water. I sat on the couch while he worked, watching TV, feeling vaguely guilty and nursing Sam to sleep. But it made me feel sure of Christ again, of that kind of love. This, a man scrubbing a new mother's bathtub, is what Jesus means to me.