"Smallness".
It's not really a word I'd like to have in a definition of myself. In fact there hasn't really ever been much small about me. I'm a bigger girl, I have always had a loud and excited personality. I have always wanted to be everyone's friend, and loved by all. No, smallness was never something I'd have put down in my "All About Me" page. Truth be told, I thought being small or having a small life was something to fear, something to feel sorry over. I never wanted to appear weak or "small" to anyone.
My journey through Emily P. Freeman's book Simply Tuesday was a pleasant and awakening one. And is was fitting that I found myself in it pages during this World Pandemic of Covid-19. It's a time where staying home is a must in helping to "flatten the curve". But for a social-needy person, it has been really hard! (Trips to the grocery store feel like a trip to Disney these days!) But in all seriousness, this book has been enlightening and healing. Emily's words so often resonated with the feeling of overwhelm in my own mind. The fears and the hurts she has had felt are so familiar to me and her vulnerability instantly helped me to trust and connect with her in it's pages.
Now, back to the smallness I was speaking of. Emily brought out a realization that truthfully, I am still wrestling with. She writes that the small moments, the daily moments and the simple times are where God, if we let Him, shines brightest and best through us. In these days at home, with no where to be, no one to see, and really no major schedule for my time, I've slowed. It's been hard! Embracing slow in a world full of it's usual hurry IS truly hard! Combine it with fear of the headlines looming and brokenness of my own self, and well, it's a perfect storm to become a bit cray cray in. But Emily's book brought up a beautiful truth that in the small, it's okay to be small, to listen, to sit, and to be in the present moment. To not plan so much, to not worry when things fall apart in the everyday-ness of confinement at this time (or any time!). As a stay at home parent, often I can feel like my life is too small. My days are too "simple" and really not all that important. I feel the draw of doing more, being more and being better or even the best at being the stay at home mom, because what else can I do to prove myself to the world around me... But the thing is, I never get far. Quickly, after I find myself fired up to chase some "big" thing I fall flat. Whether it be because I am chronically exhausted from my life's events thus far, or ultimately, my kids melt down, someone spills the milk, or doesn't like the dinner I made.
"Learning to live well in ordinary time isn't a call to elevate moments; it's a call to draw closer to Christ." In these days of "stay-home", I am dealing with so much ordinary in the midst of extraordinary circumstances and it is easy to feel lost. Just as I often have in the daily comings and goings of my "normal" life. I have always believed deep down in a broken and dark part of myself that if I am not living some BIG life, then I am unimportant. I easily throw under the bus the encouraging words of my husband and the daily things I do to keep my family moving along because they aren't being lit up. Feeling small, it makes me fear being forgotten.
The thing is, Christ, he doesn't forget me. And he doesn't forget you either.
Now, I cannot tell you that I have come into a full and new place of my life, and that I am more content than ever before because guys, I'm human! But, I can say that I am on a beautiful journey to better understanding myself, my purpose and my God. I am so thankful He brought this book's insight in to shine His light on another corner of my heart. And so I am going to leave you now with this quote from Emily's book, and I hope it will impress upon you a desire to stop the rat race that has been our everyday, worldly expectation before now and make time for the small moments that breathe life into our everyday God given Tuesdays.
"To learn to live well in ordinary time is to keep company with Christ on our simple Tuesdays and remember how he delights in keeping company with us...to believe within the deepest part of who I am that wherever I go, I don't go alone...He packs the moments of Ordinary Time with the hope of Easter, the miracle of Advent, the light of Epiphany. But he does so in the middle of my Tuesday, one ordinary moment at a time."
