In the middle of my crying and pouring out my heart and gut-wrenching feelings for quite some time, at a period in my life when I was feeling more drained and used up than I’d ever felt, I heard her say, “You must put on a mayonnaise jar.” I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry harder, but the look on her face as she sat across the tiny one window room from me, told me she was dead serious. With the shape my poor head was in during those dark days, I just stared at her. She proceeded to explain something to the effect of protecting oneself with a layer of security while still being able to see and know everything that is going on all around you. (This is especially important as a mother, so I got it.) Thus, a mayonnaise jar.
I longed to fit into one at that moment, with the lid on! She had no idea how much.
But she was and still is a beautiful nun and I loved her for caring.
I tried to take her advice while still pondering how you go about doing that. I could not even think straight much less fathom how to escape into a mayonnaise jar while I felt responsible to be everywhere, doing everything and making life as perfect as possible for those who were complaining that they were miserable and mistreated. Not to mention the guilt I felt that I wasn’t doing enough or doing it right! Or, so I perceived.
When you are young and venerable, you tend to get caught up in those "worldly" thoughts and ideas that everything is possible, you are invincible, you can be and do anything you want and that you should always want to do more and be more in order to achieve. (Achieve what?) A terribly misleading and harmful television commercial around that time comes to mind about a woman bringing home the bacon and then serving it up for a perfect dinner. And I suppose it was implied that she would be perfectly adorning a hardhat or real estate license during the day and an apron and dress that evening while doing so.
I never really wanted to work outside the home. When we were married many years ago, I knew in my mind that I would be a homemaker and that was my chosen vocation – a wife and homemaker and probably a mother to my own or someone else’s children, if God needed me to be. I really just wanted to be keeper of our home and the farm we didn’t have yet. But I did grow up during the new feminist movement that was trying to establish itself and I did think I was capable of quite a lot and maybe more.
As the years flew by, we had the typical successful home, two beautiful daughters, annual vacations and a family dog. Plus, we were covered under every kind of insurance plan available for the times and we mananged to have the beginnings of a small savings and retirement account to boot. Occasionally I worked full or part time to help supplement the husband’s income. We were well on our way to what was considered successful.
However, I was most content when I was home full time. Inwardly, I longed for this because I found it hard to be torn between too many bosses and responsibilities. Something always suffers when the keeper of the home isn’t keeping the home fires burning and tending to the needs of those who should come first. This soon happened when we made the decision to homeschool for family reasons. In the meantime, we had been feeling a strong sense of calling to adopt a child (after losing our last child during pregnancy). After 3 years of praying and discerning this call, it came to pass and we fostered and then adopted a nine year old boy with some special needs.
Fast forward less than 2 years into this and our family was hit with one crisis after another. (I think it’s what they call “being tested”.) The husband lost his job because of a back injury at home, then he had to give up a new job he had just trained for due to more health issues. A couple of months later, he had a heart attack and surgery and by then we'd already gone through the savings and the retirement accounts. In the meantime, the special needs child needed way more than we could ever give him or possibly even survive ourselves. The teenage daughters needed more from me and their father than they were close to receiving. There was only a tiny monthly income and I had to find work immediately. Our whole world was upside down and it kept getting worse, at least for a while.
About that time is when I learned about the mayonnaise jar. A true God-send, that one. While I could barely grasp the meaning of it all, it sustained me through the worst of times and gave me hope even when I didn’t know how to "put on" a mayonnaise jar (to protect myself). Eventually I found peace in knowing (learning from my dear Nun) that I had reached and survived that dark night of the soul and what Agape love truly meant. Most of all I learned how to set boundaries for myself and others, to protect and preserve myself for my role, my vocation in life, however long or short that would be. I simplified activities, goals, attitude, prayer and just about every aspect of my life. "Less is more" became a mantra for more than just personal objects. I came to find that peace flows through daily quiet time and prayer and I protected this time with zeal. I realized what C.S. Lewis meant when he said that “noise is the music of Hell”. I craved silence, the music of the soul. Eventually my spirit healed and life bloomed again like a new rose.
All this prepared me for later times in life when it would have been very easy to say “yes” to every need that presented itself as a personal call. I learned how to say “no” to those needs that were not my personal call and to discern the difference. Life is all about change (for the better) and a great many times that can take our whole life. I guess that’s why the word Patience came into existence.
Little by little we learn to bend with the wind, we learn from the wisdom which comes from experience and then we make less and less mistakes and become more refined. We begin to be gentler with ourselves and with others by simplyfing our life and learning how and when to set boundaries.
And that is what I believe it means to put on a mayonnaise jar.
~ Gwen of IRISH ACRES
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