sacred small

“So, what are you doing now?” It is a harmless question from someone I have known as far back as I have memories and have only ever known as safe. In the middle of the produce section I struggle for an answer. 

“I am taking care of my body,” I say it as my cheeks start to flush with heat and pink and a touch of shame. It is the only valid answer I can give. At the time, not working. At the time, barely showered and feeling that making it to the grocery store that day was an accomplishment outstanding enough to merit a bullet on my next resume.

I fumble to add in a few more lines of spending time with the niece and dreaming of someday pursuing a certification in Child Life, but at the end of my answer all I am is a stay at home human and I can sense the hollowness of it as it hangs between us. 

“Well, you aren’t getting any younger,” he says.

My ego singed, blistered, then popped. 

I am raw. 

I glance at the packaged pineapple and start naming the colors of piled produce in my mind to keep that pride-zapping tear from showing up on an already blanching cheek. We talk about other things and I smile, I try to soften and remember how much love there is between the two of us and how my sensitivity in this area can transform a nonchalant comment into a grenade. I pull out the shrapnel, give a warm hug, and decide whatever is in my cart is enough for now. Slowly working my way from the scene of the humiliation, I make it through checkout, and load the contents of the unfinished list into the back seat. I recognize my part in it, get in my car, and call mom. 

So much grace on the other end. She is saying kind things, true things, things I tend to forget when the weight of my body buries who I am underneath. She is an archeologist, gently taking a brush to my dry and brittle ground, she patiently sweeps back some of the layers to help unearth the gems and treasures I forgot were there. She offers me this soft place to remember who I am and that just being human is enough for today. I make it home and carry in an armful of groceries as I catch the eyes of The Husband. Same ones that have learned the look of my hard days, X Ray vision seeing straight through what others miss. He is eager for me to hang up and explain the tears, probably accounting them to a stray dog or poorly timed pedestrian squirrel since the majority of my emotions are reserved for the animal kingdom. I tell him about the encounter and he says sweet things about who I am to him and silly things about how big of a job it is to take care of both he and the dog and we laugh and I go to the bathroom to take off what’s left of my mascara because I am just so done. He has somewhere to be in the next 30 minutes but decides to stay, I convince him I am okay and after a lot of smiling and please go’s, it’s just me and Jesus left to talk about this. 

Take what is in my hands, Jesus. Because this life is fish and loaves and work that feels so hidden. It is dishes and loving a husband, sending a card and cooking a meal. It is so small. It is so simple. And I pray that I don’t dare pack a sandwich or attend a birthday party or put back a shopping cart without it dripping in love. Because that’s all I have in this place I find myself and because what else is there? 

I am many accomplishments and job changes and remarkable milestones past this conversation, yet the noise of it rings. There is still this struggle of feeling the great chasm between what I want to give and what I have to offer. This wide space that often separates me as a human being instead of a human doing. I wish that I could crank it out. I so desperately want to be this little factory of production and progress, taking those blueprints of my goals and dreams and seeing them framed up and built out in front of me. I often feel that if I could keep up, I would be unstoppable. If body and heart were on the same page, I'd race through this life with such ease. Instead I wake up with a war-time ration of energy and decide if the laundry or the items rolled over from last weeks to do list or a lunch date with a friend get my portion for that day. 

What are your fish and loaves? Those things you bring to the table, worried they will barely feed. We feel we don’t have much to give, so we hold on to it, not realizing that our open hands are all that is needed. He is the great multiplier. Chronic Illness can whittle your giant oak of a life down to what feels like thin branches. You worry that you can’t support the life you've built around you, unable to offer what you used to or want to or still desperately try to. 

When you give from a place of need, weariness, or lack, it is something of a sacrifice. The desire to still give what you have, however small, is that thing that is powerful and tells pain that it may rob you of your energy, but never your generosity or your ability to contribute to this world in a meaningful way. Generosity is one of the ways you can lean in and listen to life past the noise of pain. It is a bold declaration that you will not believe the lie of scarcity and not enough. At the height of my season of feeling so trapped by this body, I remember how every task became sacred. Waking up a few minutes before The Husband, I would make his lunch and pour him a cup of coffee as I prayer breathed words of gentleness and strength for his day and appreciation for him and all he does. Slowness will do that to you. It will put a magnifying glass over whatever task is at hand, and you can see the strokes and beauty and purpose in it's pores. I once heard it described as living life in first gear. Yes, I get that. When you move slow, life becomes more artisan and less assembly line. You can give yourself fully to this one thing before you and with intention let it become a masterpiece. And at the end of the day, you may have less to show for it, but what you do have is so rare and valuable because it was made with great attention and care. When we cannot control what we have to give, we can focus in on how we choose to give it.

Let your giving be the gift.

When I was younger, every birthday brought an envelope with scribbled handwriting in a generic card with a two dollar bill from my Granny. They came as consistently as the years until she was placed in a nursing home before she passed away. Each October I found them in my stack of cards, recognizable yet unremarkable. On the other side of more life and understanding and struggle of my own, I think about them so often. They were so meaningful. A two dollar bill. She surely would have had to make a special trip to the bank, knowing that two dollars couldn’t carry much in worth, she chose a way to load it up with value and thoughtfulness that sent the message that we mattered to her. For Granny, two dollars was a sacrifice and I know this now and I know this too late, and I would pay much more than that to get back one of those bills I probably spent on some kind of gum or frivolity. A shift in heart brings a re-defining of your economics. You begin to unfold those words of first/last, least/greatest, seen/unseen.

Do not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin. Zechariah 4:10

Do not despise the ways you can give and the things you can do. Do not underestimate  those offerings small and simple. Let the giving be the gift. Make it a practice, a habit. Shift your eyes from seeing what you don’t have to searching out ways of offering what you do. And let go of the outcomes. What if, instead of worrying about producing, you gave yourself over to planting. How freeing would that be? Every thing you do in your day could be this tree of potential deceptively packaged in a small shell of a seed. If you open your hands and drop those tiny little seeds as you go, you may never see the end result, but you will leave behind you a garden of a life grown from something so sacred small.