The Invitations of Mary Series
©MS 2026

Holiness probably did not prevent Joseph from leaving things where they did not belong.

Of course we don’t know.

Scripture tells us almost nothing about the ordinary texture of Mary and Joseph’s life together. It does not tell us how they divided chores, what they talked about over dinner, whether either snored, or which tiny domestic habits made the other close their eyes and silently ask God for patience.

But they were married.

They shared a home.

They raised a child.

And I find it almost impossible to believe that two human beings could live together for years without occasionally thinking:

If you do that one more time, Joseph…

Not because their marriage was unhappy.

Precisely because it was real.

Perhaps Joseph had a habit.

Something tiny.

Something harmless.

Something Mary initially didn’t even notice.

And after several years of marriage, it drove her absolutely insane.

Maybe—

Joseph never put his tools away.

Not all of them.

That would be unreasonable.

Joseph was a tekton—a craftsman or builder—and his work likely involved tools for wood, stone, and construction.

He knew how to care for them.

He knew where they belonged.

That wasn’t the problem.

The problem was that Joseph apparently believed anything he was currently using did not technically need to be put away.

Even if “currently” meant:

I intend to use this again sometime before sunset.

So there was always something.

A measuring cord.

A wooden mallet.

A chisel.

A small knife.

A piece of wood he was examining.

Something leaning against a wall.

Something sitting on a table.

Something directly where Mary needed to put something else.

At first, she moved them.

Without comment.

Then she started asking.

“Joseph?”

“Yes?”

“Is this yours?”

Joseph looked over.

“Yes.”

Mary waited.

Joseph went back to what he was doing.

“Joseph.”

He looked up again.

“What?”

Mary held up the tool.

“Why is it here?”

Joseph looked genuinely confused.

“I’m using it.”

“You are sitting over there.”

“I’ll need it again.”

“When?”

“Later.”

Mary stared at him.

Later.

The most dangerous word in marriage.

Maybe Mary had a place for things.

Not because she was obsessively tidy.

Because their home was small.

Small houses do not permit belongings to wander freely.

Everything needed somewhere to go.

Food.

Textiles.

Cooking vessels.

Water jars.

Tools.

Sleeping mats.

Clothing.

And eventually everything belonging to a baby.

There wasn’t endless space.

Joseph, however, apparently possessed the mysterious ability to set something down and cease seeing it.

Mary did not.

She saw it immediately.

Every time she walked past.

There it is.

Still there.

She might leave it deliberately.

I am not moving it.

She passes again.

Still there.

Good.

Joseph will move it.

An hour later:

Still there.

Mary cooks.

Still there.

The sun begins going down.

Still.

There.

Finally Joseph reaches for it.

Mary watches.

This is it.

He is going to put it away.

Joseph uses it for approximately thirty seconds—

and sets it down somewhere else.

Mary closes her eyes.

Lord, give me strength.

Maybe Joseph had no idea.

That’s the funniest possibility.

Mary’s irritation could have reached astonishing proportions before Joseph ever realized there was a problem.

One evening he finds her standing silently with a tool in her hand.

“What?”

Mary smiles.

Nothing good has ever followed that particular smile.

“Nothing.”

Joseph looks at the tool.

Then at Mary.

“What did I do?”

“You didn’t do anything.”

That sounds worse.

Joseph thinks.

He is a righteous man.

A capable man.

A man entrusted by God with the earthly protection of the Messiah.

None of these qualifications help him now.

Finally:

“Did I leave that somewhere?”

Mary looks at him.

“Did you?”

Joseph begins to understand.

“On the table?”

“Which time?”

Oh.

There have been multiple times.

Perhaps eventually it became a running argument.

Not a serious argument.

A married argument.

The kind where both people already know every line.

Mary finds something.

“Joseph.”

“I’m using it.”

“I haven’t even told you what I found.”

A pause.

“I’ll put it away.”

“You don’t know what I’m talking about.”

“I have a reasonable suspicion.”

Mary tries not to smile.

“Then perhaps we have identified the problem.”

Joseph comes to retrieve whatever he abandoned.

Maybe he kisses her forehead on the way past.

Mary refuses to be charmed.

For at least three seconds.

And Mary certainly had habits that annoyed Joseph too.

She must have.

We sometimes imagine Mary as though the Immaculate Conception meant she possessed none of the harmless peculiarities that make another person mutter under their breath.

Sinlessness is not the same thing as being universally convenient.

Perhaps Mary talked to herself while working.

Not prayers.

Just commentary.

“Where did I put that?”

Joseph hears her from across the room.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

A moment later:

“No, that’s not right.”

Joseph looks up.

“What isn’t?”

“I’m talking to myself.”

“Could you tell me when you’re doing that?”

Mary ignores him.

Two minutes later:

“There you are.”

Joseph:

“Who?”

Mary:

“No one.”

Joseph closes his eyes.

Perhaps that was Mary’s habit.

Joseph never knew whether he was part of the conversation.

Or maybe Mary rearranged things.

Joseph had a perfectly good system.

At least according to Joseph.

Mary called this system:

Leaving everything wherever you last touched it.

So she organized his work area.

Joseph came home.

Stopped.

Looked around.

“Where is everything?”

“I put it away.”

“Where?”

“Where it belongs.”

Joseph stared at her.

“But I knew where everything was.”

Mary slowly turned toward him.

There are moments when even the foster father of Jesus should know to retreat.

This was one of them.

Maybe Jesus grew up hearing this.

That’s even better.

A little boy sitting nearby while his parents conduct the same completely harmless argument for the four-hundredth time.

Mary:

“Your father’s tools are on the table again.”

Joseph:

“I am sitting right here.”

Mary:

“I know.”

Jesus looks at Joseph.

Then at Mary.

He wisely continues eating.

Years later, perhaps Joseph begins looking for something.

“Has anyone seen my measuring cord?”

Mary doesn’t even look up.

“Where did you leave it?”

“If I knew where I left it, I wouldn’t be looking for it.”

Mary slowly raises her eyes.

Young Jesus sees what is coming.

Maybe he quietly gets up and leaves.

The Son of God knows when a situation is beyond intervention.

I love imagining these moments because we have done something strange to the Holy Family.

We have made them so peaceful that they barely seem alive.

Look at most Nativity scenes.

Mary gazes serenely at Jesus.

Joseph stands serenely nearby.

Jesus sleeps serenely.

Even the animals appear to have achieved spiritual enlightenment.

Nobody is irritated.

Nobody is hungry.

Nobody smells.

Nothing is misplaced.

But families aren’t like that.

Love isn’t like that.

You can love someone profoundly and still be driven absolutely mad by the sound they make when they eat something crunchy.

You can respect someone and still wonder why they cannot replace something after using it.

You can be devoted to someone and still need them to stop tapping their fingers on the table.

These things aren’t failures of love.

They’re often evidence of intimacy.

You only learn someone’s tiny annoying habits because you’ve spent enough ordinary time beside them to discover them.

Mary knew Joseph in ways we never will.

She knew how he slept.

How he ate.

What he looked like first thing in the morning.

How he behaved when tired.

Which jokes he repeated too often.

Which tasks he procrastinated.

What he forgot.

What he worried about.

Perhaps he hummed while working.

The same melody.

Over.

And over.

And over.

At first Mary liked it.

Years later, Joseph begins:

Hmm hmm hmm—

From another room:

“Joseph.”

The humming stops.

“What?”

Mary says nothing.

Joseph waits.

Then realizes.

“I was doing it again?”

“Yes.”

“Sorry.”

Five minutes later:

Hmm hmm hmm—

Mary stares at the ceiling.

Maybe that was the habit.

Honestly, Joseph may have had several.

And Joseph knew Mary just as intimately.

Not Mary, Queen of Heaven.

Mary who was cranky because she hadn’t slept well.

Mary who misplaced something and insisted she hadn’t.

Mary who had a particular way of folding cloth.

Mary who hated being interrupted while concentrating.

Mary who always wanted the door secured a certain way.

Mary who became irritated when Joseph told a story incorrectly.

“You’re skipping something.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It does matter.”

“It has nothing to do with the story.”

“Then why did it happen?”

Joseph stares at her.

Jesus, somewhere nearby, is trying very hard not to laugh.

There must have been apologies too.

Small ones.

“I’m sorry.”

“I know.”

“I forgot.”

“I know.”

“I’ll put it away next time.”

Mary gives him a look.

“I will.”

She does not believe him.

He genuinely means it.

Both things can be true.

Maybe Joseph improves for three days.

Everything goes back where it belongs.

Mary notices.

She doesn’t say anything because she doesn’t want to frighten the behavior away.

Day four.

There is a chisel on the table.

Mary sees it.

Joseph sees Mary see it.

Their eyes meet.

Joseph immediately stands.

“I was about to move that.”

Mary nods.

“Of course.”

He grabs it.

She smiles into whatever she’s doing.

But perhaps sometimes the habit stopped being funny.

Because that’s real too.

Maybe Mary was exhausted.

Maybe Jesus had been difficult that day.

Maybe something hurt.

Maybe money was tight.

Maybe she’d already cleaned.

Then she walked into the room and nearly stepped on something Joseph left where it shouldn’t be.

“Joseph!”

This time there was genuine anger.

He heard it.

He came immediately.

“What?”

She pointed.

Joseph looked.

“Oh.”

Mary didn’t laugh.

“I asked you.”

“I know.”

“I have asked you so many times.”

“I know.”

“Then why is it there?”

And Joseph didn’t have an answer.

Because sometimes there isn’t one.

“I forgot.”

Perhaps Mary sighed.

Not the playful sigh.

The exhausted one.

And Joseph saw the difference.

He picked it up.

Then maybe he noticed everything else she had done that day.

Perhaps he said:

“Sit down.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re angry.”

“I can be angry standing.”

That almost gets a smile.

Almost.

“Sit.”

Maybe Joseph finished whatever she had been doing.

Not because Mary was incapable.

Because sometimes loving someone means realizing the tiny thing you’ve done a hundred times has landed differently today.

And perhaps Mary learned the same thing.

Maybe Joseph came home exhausted one evening and Mary immediately began telling him everything that needed doing.

Normally he didn’t mind.

That day he did.

“Mary.”

She stopped.

His tone was enough.

Maybe she felt defensive for half a second.

Then she looked at him properly.

Saw his shoulders.

His hands.

His face.

“Oh.”

Perhaps she put the list away.

“Eat first.”

And that was marriage too.

Not never annoying each other.

Learning when the annoyance means something more.

Learning the difference between:

You left your tool on my table again, you impossible man.

and:

I have nothing left today, and this tiny thing is somehow the thing that broke me.

People who love one another learn those differences.

Slowly.

Usually imperfectly.

I wonder if, after Joseph died, Mary ever found one of his tools.

We don’t know when Joseph died. Scripture simply stops mentioning him, and Christian tradition generally understands him to have died before Jesus’ public ministry was complete.

But if Mary outlived him, as the Gospel narratives strongly imply—

then someday there were no more tools left on the table.

No humming.

No misplaced measuring cord.

No:

“Joseph.”

No:

“I was going to put it away.”

Just quiet.

And suddenly the habit that had annoyed her for years might have become something she would have given anything to encounter one more time.

Perhaps she opened something and found a tool he had left there long ago.

Her first thought, instinctive and immediate:

Joseph, honestly—

Then silence.

Maybe she held it.

Maybe she laughed.

Maybe she cried.

Perhaps both.

Because grief has a cruel way of making sacred the things that once irritated us.

The abandoned cup.

The shoes in the wrong place.

The repetitive story.

The stupid little habit you complained about for twenty years.

You would like it back now.

Just once.

Maybe that’s why I like imagining Joseph leaving his tools everywhere.

Not because I want to make him foolish.

Because I want to let him be known.

Mary didn’t love an icon.

She loved a man.

A real one.

A man with virtues enormous enough that God entrusted Jesus to his protection.

A man who chose mercy when he thought Mary had betrayed him.

A man who listened when God spoke.

A man who fled his homeland to keep a child safe.

A man who worked.

Provided.

Protected.

Stayed.

And perhaps—

occasionally—

left the damned chisel on the table.

Again.

Mary could be profoundly grateful for Joseph and still be irritated by him.

Joseph could honor Mary beyond measure and still occasionally need five minutes of silence.

They could misunderstand.

Apologize.

Tease.

Sigh.

Roll their eyes.

Get on each other’s nerves.

And love each other completely.

Those things can exist in the same house.

Maybe that’s one of the things we lose when we make the Holy Family too polished.

Holiness does not require people to stop being people.

It teaches them how to love one another while they are.

So yes.

I think Mary and Joseph probably annoyed each other.

I hope they did.

Because somewhere in Nazareth, I like imagining Mary walking into a room, stopping dead, and looking at the table.

There it is.

Again.

She picks it up.

“Joseph?”

From the workshop:

“Yes?”

Mary holds the tool in the air.

There is a long silence.

Then Joseph calls:

“I was going to put that away.”

Mary closes her eyes.

And perhaps, despite herself, smiles.