Text: An­ne Lind­fors

Trans­la­ti­on: Sirk­ka-Lii­sa Lei­no­nen

I stand on the yard and gaze in­to au­tum­nal twi­light. My face is wet from driz­z­le. I take a deep bre­ath. I know there are far too many things that re­qui­re my at­ten­ti­on. Too many ex­pec­ta­ti­ons and de­mands. I stare in­to the dee­pe­ning dusk. There is a lump in my throat. I feel so ina­de­qu­a­te.

When I go in, my hus­band sees my fee­ling of ex­haus­ti­on and ina­de­qu­a­cy. He co­mes and hugs me. Right in the mid­d­le of a busy eve­ning, he lis­tens to my con­cerns and com­forts me with the fa­mi­li­ar words. I look at his ey­es, the love that shi­nes from them. I won­der who it ac­tu­al­ly was that has the big­gest de­mands and ex­pec­ta­ti­ons. My­self? And for no good re­a­son. No-one needs to strug­g­le bey­ond their strength. And I can take my time to le­arn new things one at a time. I close my ey­es and lis­ten to the mo­ment. I sud­den­ly feel pe­a­ce­ful and se­cu­re.

The ear­ly au­tumn was a time of chan­ges in our fa­mi­ly. Af­ter a long time I re­tur­ned to work out­si­de home. Get­ting used to the dai­ly work sche­du­le was hard, and cho­res pi­led up at home. Our child­ren nee­ded to be held and lis­te­ned to. There were mo­ments when I felt poig­nant­ly ina­de­qu­a­te.

Yet, I have al­so felt deep­ly gra­te­ful for the time I was ab­le to spend at home with our child­ren. I saw them grow and wit­nes­sed their first steps. That may ne­ver be pos­sib­le again in our fa­mi­ly, but I am hap­py for ha­ving had that ex­pe­rien­ce. Alt­hough I have such warm me­mo­ries of that time, it was not al­wa­ys ea­sy or light. There were mo­ments in dai­ly fa­mi­ly life when I should have ac­ted dif­fe­rent­ly. I should have been wi­ser and more pa­tient.

One day I was tel­ling our tee­na­ger how of­ten I had found my­self un­suc­ces­s­ful as a mot­her. My child said gent­ly, ”For us you were the per­fect mot­her”. I lif­ted my gaze and shook my head. I re­min­ded her that I had lost my tem­per so of­ten. When I was ti­red, I was im­pa­tient and spoke ang­ry words. I was not a good examp­le to my child­ren. The child did not look away when she said, “No, mot­her. All that has been for­gi­ven.” Those words touc­hed me deep­ly. I felt en­com­pas­sed by to­tal grace.

I have of­ten won­de­red about the touc­hing faith of child­ren. One day one of our child­ren loo­ked up at the rain­bow in the sky and said to her fat­her, “It would be fun to find a real tre­a­su­re at the end of the rain­bow.” Then she was qui­et for a mo­ment and said cheer­ful­ly, ”Yes, but… there is a tre­a­su­re at the end of one’s life. If one is be­lie­ving.”

It is so good to know that we al­re­a­dy pos­sess part of this tre­a­su­re through faith. We find it in for­gi­ve­ness, whe­re­by God’s love ma­kes the pe­ni­tent sin­ner comp­le­te­ly clean. In the light of that love even an un­suc­ces­s­ful pa­rent or spou­se seems per­fect.