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Today, I’m waiting.

I experienced a significant high last June when I secured a wonderful literary agent. (For those of you not in the publishing world, that can be one of the hardest parts. Major win!) I’ve submitted book proposals now to publishers. And now, I wait.

I’ve written openly about how challenging it’s been to come back to America from Africa when I didn’t feel ready. (At all.) I’ve thought a lot about everyday faithfulness, hoping to live the life of a quiet radical. And as I’m waiting for a “yes” or a “no” after some significant “no’s,” waiting does its usual stirring up inside me, questions bubbling to the surface, the silt making things opaque. As I thought the other day about the possibilities ahead, the prospect of hope felt like something was cracking me down the middle.

So I am in the process of repeating truth to myself. I have realized that God never has to justify his math with me; to make something good happen so I will suddenly understand the complexity of his equations. Sometimes, He’s just God and I am just not (again: You Potter, me clay). I try here, in my ardent attempts at open-handedness, to still approach him boldly; to still be honest about desire.

The “Little” Life

This isn’t my first rodeo. Back when I had four kids five and under and was drowning in apple juice with a few Goldfish crackers floating on top, I asked a lot of the same questions. I’d been willing to go anywhere for him. And he chose suburbia complete with white picket fence and a dog? For real?

I had a lot to learn about my motivations for a big life. I know we’re told to dream big for God. But I had to come to the realization that when I told God anywhere, I kind of meant anywhere sexy.  My me-centered cravings had, in some sly ways, gotten a little religious lipstick.

My desire to do something big for God was at times just a desire not to be small. And even now, I realize there’s a part of me ready to shuck smallness.

I resonated deeply with the words of author and speaker Courtney Reissig wrote wisely last week in her post “We Can’t Take Our Platform to the Grave”,

The pattern of scripture is lose yourself and you will find yourself (Matt. 10:39). Smallness equals greatness. Faithfulness is success. Sure, God does appoint some people for incredibly large platforms and revenue. But that’s not the norm, and they usually didn’t seek it out.

…I don’t like smallness. There is a lot of talk about saying we want that, saying numbers don’t matter [in an author’s platform], and saying that it’s really about just ministering. But even as I’ve grown to see it as unimportant, I’ll admit in my flesh, I do want it. I want people to like me.  I want people to praise me. And boy, do I want those retweets and likes. It’s a battle that I’ll be fighting until I die, I am sure.

I don’t want to live under the guise of “I’m okay with smallness” all the while really longing for something better.

Last week, I realized there’s still a part of me that longs to be done with smallness, or perhaps to achieve some Christified version of greatness. (Another young mom friend of mine agrees: She’s ready to be done wiping hinies).

“God wants to do something __ through you!”

We are frequently told some version of, “God wants to do something big through you!” But I like the words tweeted by Chad Bird last week:

God has small plans for you. He’s working something little in your life. It may bore you, even hurt. It will be totally unawesome. Yet, tucked in that brown paper simplicity of life, God will be at work, hidden in his opposite, camouflaged in the colors of a secret sanctity.

Someone recently pointed out to me the story of Jesus praising the widow who gave her two small coins in the temple. She’s written as having “put in everything she had” (Mark 12:44)–to the God who took her husband; who took, essentially, everything she has. Notice Jesus is not impressed by the large, noisy gifts of the rich clattering into the box. He’s impressed instead by the quiet, all-in sacrifice. How she gave was more important than what.

I don’t know what smallness you’re muddling through like me. As a girl with big dreams–maybe I wish I didn’t understand so well. No matter our success (or lack thereof), may God continue to work smallness in both of us.

 

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