What homeschooling mother has not felt like the prophet without honor in her own country on at least one occasion? Like the underappreciated loyal servant, the unacknowledged expert, the unrecognized genius in her own home, her own family. What stay-at-home mom has not felt like the person who is just always there - like the sagging couch in the living room or the perpetual laundry waiting in the hamper? The person whose humble origins are are all too well-known by the masses, the person who has been observed all too often scrubbing the toilets, cleaning the catbox or trying to camouflage last night's leftovers for today's lunch?
Can I be the only one who has noticed that her children's father, on the other hand, is like the bridegroom whose friends cannot help feasting when he is present. His daily advent at 6 or 7 or 8 pm is always a cause for festivity. He gets to return every day to great rejoicing. While Mom is probably the first person the kids laid eyes on today - like every other day, Dad is able to maintain a certain aura of mystery, of the unknown. Mom's every waking moment is open to (and subjected to) the scrutiny of childish and teenage eyes. They see her at her worst as well as her best. No public persona clings to her - the public and the private have merged in her case.
And Dad knows things Mom doesn't know; he has years of experience "in the real world" that Mom has clearly never known. How could she? She's always here. The kids have heard that Mom had a job for awhile, before they were even born, but no one is too sure what she actually did. What did anyone do that long ago? Dad has an important job he goes to everyday - and even has to sequester himself behind closed doors two evenings a week to take important phone calls. Mom's phone calls are from people like the piano teacher and the tennis coach. Or other homeschool moms. Her calls never require quiet or privacy, which is fortunate. Sometimes Dad is away for weeks at a time, flying business class across the world. He brings home special things for everyone and has fun stories to tell about where he's been. Mom seldom goes anywhere for longer than four hours, and then it's usually the grocery store. She does bring things home, but they're not much fun. Not much exciting happens in the checkout lane.
I was feeling like the dissed prophet yesterday. Dad had a holiday - the Prophet Mohammed's birthday. Dad's days off are always happy events for the kids. They get to skip schoolwork for the day - that unpleasant chore that Mom always imposes on them - and do fun things: go out for breakfast, play tennis, go shopping, watch The Terminator with Dad (again). I was OK with that - really - but then things got a little out of hand. I was happy to have engineer Dad be the math expert and do SAT prep with second daughter. I am, in fact, thrilled to play second fiddle to him when the topic at hand is advanced math. I even slip into the audience and applaud loudly when the virtuoso performance is over and the last strains of quadratic equations fade away. But there was a literature kind of question that also came up during the day, and Dad got to field that one and be the advisor to that project, too. They took his advice over mine, even though I am the degreed and credentialed Liberal Arts major in the house. What was that about??
While I was considering this slight in my own mind I remembered the proverb about the prophet who was not without honor except in his own country. "Who said that anyway?" I wondered? Of course, it was Jesus himself. So He knew how I was feeling! Perhaps I was not alone in my aggrieved state - perhaps it was OK to feel that twinge of distress that stopped just short of envy. Perhaps I could even expect a little heavenly commiseration. Jesus is, after all, not a high priest who cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but was in all points tempted as we are. . . . yet without sin. . . .Oh. I knew there was a catch somewhere.
So, I had to ask myself how did Jesus react when He knew He was not respected, not properly esteemed? Did He sulk? Go to his room? Grow ominously quiet? Did He even let it bother Him? No, it appears He did not. He certainly noted what was happening, but then He just moved on. I wonder if He even may have laughed when He quoted the proverb to His disciple-friends. Maybe He clapped John or Peter on the back, shook His head and said, "Come on, let's roll." He does not appear to have skipped a beat. He had work to do elswhere and He did it. Probably with a cheerful attitude.
Any justification I had felt for my own self-pity seemed to have evaporated when I considered how little Jesus cared for honor that was rightfully His. Whether my perceived grievances were real or imagined made no difference, and by now I was having trouble remembering why I had felt so offended in the first place. And that still, small voice was whispering in my ear the exact words of profound wisdom I needed at the moment, "Get over it." So I did.
Then Jesus told them, "A prophet is honored everywhere except in his own hometown and among his relatives and his own family." - Mark 6:4 NLT
