The Last Peony {…theology with its apron on…for young mothers…}

There is a peony on my studio table right now that has no business being this beautiful.

It is the last one of the whole year. The peonies are finished, every other bloom has come and gone, done its work, dropped its petals. But this one held on. And this week, I cut it and put it in an old amber bottle, the kind meant for something else entirely, something utilitarian and unremarkable, and set it in the middle of my art table, among the paint-stained surfaces and scattered supplies and the paper with its half-finished botanical sketch.

And I keep stopping to look at it. Not because it's the most perfect peony I've ever grown. It's actually a little ragged at the edges now, as last things often are. But there is something about the last bloom of the season, the one that arrives after you've stopped expecting anymore, that stops me in a way the first ones never quite do.

You know, when you look at it, that this is it. This is the last of this particular beauty for a whole year.

So you look. You really look.

I want to talk to the young mothers who have found their way here recently (mostly through my free mini-class “Commonplacing”.

I see you arriving, some of you homeschooling, most of you in the thick of the most demanding and invisible season of your lives, and I want to say something to you that I wish someone had said to me when I was standing where you are standing:

What you are doing is harder than anyone is telling you. And I do not mean harder in a way that is meant to frighten you, or make you feel sorry for yourself. I mean harder in a way that is simply, biologically, actually true.

When you are the primary caregiver, the one there for most of the waking hours, the one whose nervous system is always, always on, your body is carrying a load that most people around you cannot see. You are listening when it looks like you are just sitting. You are anticipating even before the need becomes a need. You are co-regulating, lending your own hard-won calm to small people (and angsty teens) who must appropriate it for themselves, often dozens of times before noon.

And here is what co-regulation actually means, underneath the language: your calm is the scaffolding their nervous systems use for support. Every time one of your children borrows your steadiness to find their own, that costs something real from you. Something actual. Not metaphorical.

I know this, even in my own empty-nesting life. Because there are still people who look to me for guidance, and the simple sense that “all is well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well…”. My own husband, “The Preacher” can be an intense personality. There are times and seasons when my inner peace ministers to his nervous system.

Your body gives something every single time. So when the beautiful days still leave you weary, when you need ten minutes alone more than you need food, please hear me. That is not a resilience problem. It is not weakness. It’s math, man.

Twenty-five years farther than you down this road, I am standing in an art studio that did not exist when my children were small. I am drawing botanical sketches and growing peonies and teaching women about the Bible and making, and I can tell you with my whole self that the season you are in right now, that relentless, holy, costly season, it does not last forever.

But it is a season. And seasons have distinct requirements. Seasons have harvests particular to them, and if you do not recognize the harvest, the harvest is left behind. It is effectively wasted. The peony on my table is there because I “harvested” it. I saw it was the end of a season, so I put it there. Not because I had time to. Not because my studio was clean enough to deserve it.

It is there because twenty-five-years-younger Sheila had to learn something that took her too long to learn, and I am not letting myself forget it:

Beauty placed in the middle of the mess is not a reward for finishing the work. It is fuel for continuing it.

Nourishment has to rise with demand. The ones who give the most need the most in return. Not someday. Now. In the middle of the undone and the ordinary Tuesday that somehow costs more than you ever thought you could afford.

Morning light before the rush starts, if you can get it. Gospel preaching for your soul, from a preacher who preaches it faithfully. A meal that actually feeds you. Predictable rhythms so your body stops bracing for what comes next. A pocket of quiet, however small. And something beautiful…one thing, even a ragged last peony, placed in your line of sight as an act of intention.

I used to feel guilty about those pockets of quiet. I do not anymore. Even with an empty nest, I do not feel guilty about the time I devote to quiet or replenishment or beauty.

You found your way here through a class about handmade books and the practice of writing by hand. Something in you is already reaching toward slowness, toward beauty, toward a practice that feeds the inner life even in the middle of a full and demanding one.That reaching is not indulgence. It is wisdom. Listen to it.

The last peony on my table is a little ragged. It is more beautiful than words. It will not last much longer than one more day, and I know it. But when I was younger, last things always took me by surprise. I hope you know your “last things” when you see them. They quickly are here and gone.

I am so glad you are here.