Ezer Means Warrior

poem for Mother's Day

Washerwomen at the Oise River near Valmondois by Charles-François Daubigny (1817-1878)

Ezer Means Warrior
By Abigail Knutson
 
Brave women give their very selves to those
who grow inside and whose dependence shows
in bulging life, that glorious balloon:
O mystery and metaphor of the womb.
Life asks a mother’s first, last, and all.
Embryonic need for blood never stalls
but asks for every drop pumped through the heart
to travel, oxygen rich, to the start
of life, tiny seed clenched in the dark,
consuming to consume more and embark
toward a pinprick of light, pass through bone.
The exit roars with fire. Then you’re home.
 
What began as indistinguishable from self
becomes another, flowers into a wealth
of being so intricate you take my breath.
Once out, your milk comes from my breasts,
and so we share my warmth until you grow
into your skin, your lungs, your toes.
My world shrinks yet unfurls as you get words.
If I dissect my feelings, joy’s absurd.
Your smile is enough. I play with trains,
color dogs, point at trucks, walk in the rain.
I build a tower of blocks to be knocked down,
sweep floors for cookie crumbs. Books get found.
 
Books get lost again. I scrub clothes that will fall
on wet grass. Throw and catch this bouncing ball.
What is the meaning of these repetitions?
The meaning might be silence between words. Creation
is the heartbeat that we share. Catch the love.
Throw it back. Once women sat before a tub
to tattoo washboards with the clothes they’d sewn.
They hauled water from wells and rivers: alone
or working together. Picture them talking
and lifting laughter to the sun, walking
back with clothes and courage cleaned, their burdens shared.
I can’t imagine sewing everything we wear.
 
These women had reasons I can’t even name
to complain. Large knuckled and wind lined, same
heartbeat in their chest keeps time in mine.
It tells me ezer means a warrior: a fine
name for God or for the keeper of a home.
What’s worth keeping is the rest of shalom,
and it might not be kept without a fight,
but I’ll think of those who worked by candlelight
and roll up my sleeves to use my machines.
I’ll bake our bread and read our books and dream
of making sanctuary in this place. 
Such stuff as dreams are made on, too, is grace.

Woman Washing Clothes in River by Henri Martin (1860-1943)

Composition Notes

Like most women who were raised in the church, I have had my ups and downs with the concept of being a helpmeet. It was a great comfort to me to study the word ezer and realize that God calls himself an ezer when he saves his people. A helpmeet, then, is not a docile servant but a sustainer and rescuer. At first, I found the comparison a bit bewildering. What, exactly, were women meant to save?

After a very short time of homemaking and mothering, I realized that being a keeper of the home is not for the faint of heart. Not only do we intervene constantly to keep the second law of thermodynamics from running wild, but if you have children, that means keeping little ones alive who want nothing more than to toddle into a busy street or quiet pond. Once these youngsters have grown big enough to have a driver’s license and social circle outside of our purview, we listen for the garage door to go up in the wee hours of the night. We circle our homes in prayer, asking for spiritual and physical protection, remembering gratefully to nestle under the one who longs to shelter us under his wing. I’m adding the endless laundry and meals and dishes as an afterthought: mothering takes all we have to give and more. We go into battle daily to fight for the needs of those in our care.

If you feel tired, remember that you serve a God who grants the weary their own special welcome and promise. Come to him. He will give you rest. Today I sat outside for a few moments in prayer and listened to birdsong. I only had a few uninterrupted minutes, but the Lord deposited peace in my spirit that I lived off for the rest of the day.

When I feel weary of modern mothering, I also find encouragement in reading historical accounts. There’s nothing quite like putting the work of unloading a Costco run into perspective like reading about Ma Ingalls canning food for her family and sewing every last stitch of their clothing. This is not to disparage our modern workload. Humans work more hours than ever before thanks to all of the electronic conveniences keeping us up for more hours at night than ever before.¹ There’s no need to feel guilty, or to disparage our workload: I just want to be grateful for the goods I get to purchase and unload. If you have never worried about your children going hungry, then you have been spared a burden mothers throughout history were forced to bear. May even our grocery runs become an opportunity for thanksgiving.

I love reading about Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s grandmother birthing her own twin girls as she brought in the goats.² I love reading about Sabina Wurmbrand’s³ valiant efforts to free her husband from Communist prison as she kept their underground church up and running and fearlessly shared the gospel. I need these women to round out my inner landscape of what it means to be feminine. They are strong. They are beautiful. They remind me of how powerful it is to be made in the image of our ezer.

Please don’t read any of this as an added burden to your already full plate. You don’t have to birth your own twins or can your own vegetables or run underground churches. But you could. I am not adding a thing to your to-do list. I just want to stop for a minute and marvel at the amazing things our bodies can do, which all point back to our infinitely creative maker. I honor the immense job of motherhood: how it transforms us, literally from the inside out.

I wrote the first draft of this poem when our first two boys were still small. They were born eighteen-months apart, and those first few years were a blur of pregnancy and nursing and near-constant exhaustion. I couldn’t stop marveling at the changes in my own heart and mind (not to mention body!) as I suddenly delighted in pointing out garbage trucks and trains just to see their wide-eyed wonder. The workload was tedious at times, and yet I felt so much purpose and conviction. I never knew how to answer the question if mothering made me happy because it seemed beside the point. Happy? Maybe. Maybe not. But I was needed. I braced myself for stretch marks and weight gain, but I had never loved my body more. I must have a utilitarian mindset because as absurd as it sounds, I felt a fierce joy in my body getting used up in the work of motherhood. It was so much more satisfying than trying to preserve or beautify it.

The laundry was endless, but so were smiles and baby signs and requests for one more book and tight hugs from boys who smelled faintly of honey and windy sunshine. As I embraced the necessity of repetition, I saw the beautiful monotony of my own heartbeat and the cadence of my breathing, which had kept my children alive. (I think this was when I fell in love with iambic pentameter, as I mused on its heartbeat rhythm and how comforting it is to us, mimicking that first sound heard in utero.) All this nostalgia is no doubt due to our recent move and our oldest graduating high school. I took my thesis to heart today and sought to embrace the monotony of unpacking boxes, the work of relocating and all the requisite paperwork required to find new dentists and doctors and co-ops. This, too, makes a beautiful life: one box and one breath and one iambic pentameter line at a time.

May the Lord meet you where you need him most. May he make you brave in his love. May he grant you the grace to dream of home.

Love, Abigail

1. “In 1879, Thomas Edison invented the light bulb, which, among other things, cut way back on our sleep time. Prior to the light bulb, the average American slept ten hours a night” (36). - Praying Like Monks, Living Like Fools by Tyler Staton

2. Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

3. The Pastor’s Wife by Sabina Wurmbrand