One of my most favorite apron stories is the one of Susannah Wesley’s apron.  Susannah was the mother of John and Charles Wesley, founders of the Methodist Church, good men.  She was the mother of at least ten children.  So you can imagine how many appetites, big and small, physical and emotional, this mother had to appease, whet, feed.  She had to have plenty of aprons because she had to have done a lot of cooking, carrying eggs in from the chicken coop, wiping snotty noses and dirty faces, hauling fresh vegetables from the garden, or mopping sweat from her brow.  A busy woman.  A good woman.

How do I know that?  Her apron.  Not only did it do duty as a work horse; it was also her prayer room.  As a mother with next to no privacy, (I can’t even imagine having all those children and no dishwasher) she would sit in a rocker and put her apron over her head, the signal for all boys and girls to leave Momma alone for she was entering her time of prayer, her “my space.”  An apron?  In the middle of a chaotic household?  What about “me time”?  Where’s Calgon?  Where’s solitude and put up my feet?

Susannah had a big appetite… for God and His Holiness.  She would sit in her rocker with her apron over her head and pray for her children.  I wonder if they knew to tiptoe around her, giving her the privacy she craved to be alone with her God, to talk with Him, just the two of them together, under an apron.