Small Things

It’s been just about a year since I moved back “home” to the town where I grew up and my family still lives, and the questions are starting to get a little more insistent. “Where are you going next?” “When are you planning to move?” “What are you waiting for?”

They all come (I hope!) from a place of love and curiosity and the funny thrill that we all get from watching someone else do “big things” with their life. And, oh, how I would love to be able to hand them a packet with dates and details. But, the truth is, every time that I ask those same questions of God, I hear His quiet whisper to, “Wait. Stay. Love where I have you.”

And, so, I’m here.

I’m here, letting my breath catch in wonder at the God who is present in all things. He is present in the highschoolers who dump buckets of water on my head and the fourth and fifth graders who glow with pride when I compliment them. He is present when my cluster girls cry and when the Focus Month kids laugh about something that was said weeks before. He is present in Portland and in Haiti and as we draw hundreds of stick figures in the park.

I’m here, falling in love with kids that I didn’t know a year ago, but who I now count as “mine.”

I’m here, watching in awe as the fruit of what I did in middle school and high school stands before my eyes, growing up and growing into the men and women that God designed them to become.

I’m here, looking back and looking forwards and remembering the Mother Theresa quote that says, “We can do no great things, only small things with great love.”

I may not know the answers to the “big things,” or even the medium things, but I can strive to do small things with great love. Because, if there is one thing that I do know, it is that I love these people, and that I love the God who loves them. And…I figure that He’s pretty much got the big things covered.