day by day.

God is leading me step by step and day by day.

I am once again in the place of feeling like all is outside my control, that I have no idea what tomorrow holds or what next year holds, that this has to be a walk of faith or nothing.

It is still a hard place to be in, just like it was six months ago.  I had hoped – had planned – to have more certainty at this point in our story.  But it doesn’t seem like certainty is God’s will for me right now.  Or maybe it is.  But maybe certainty in who he is, not in what my life is.

The fears come creeping back often, nosing impatiently against my hands and the backs of my legs, greedy to take hold of me.

I don’t want to be clammed up with fear. 

I want to be quieted by hope and joy and trust.  I want to be like my children, my three-year-old and my now-two-year-old, who embrace each day for what it is: a gift.  Who instinctively know that it’s more important to sit on the couch and read books with Mommy or to wrestle Kung Fu Panda-style on the floor with Daddy – in short, to live in this moment – than to sit and worry about the future.

They keep me anchored to now.  They remind me that the most important thing about my day is the tone of voice in which I speak to my family (there is so much power in that tone) or whether I’ve taken time to stop and smile at my downstairs neighbor when she calls out a greeting.  Figuring out where we should live next year or reorganizing a roomful of toys can wait.  In this moment, my eight-months-pregnant friend Maggie is at home recovering from jet-lag, and I have thirty free minutes to run over and see how she is doing.

It doesn’t feel like checking something off a list.  It doesn’t feel like anything I can measure or “feel good about accomplishing.”  But it shouldn’t feel that way.  My family, my downstairs neighbor, my friend Maggie aren’t projects.  They’re not interruptions.  They’re people.  They’re complex.  If my mind is perpetually dwelling in my to-do list, or in the “not yet” of my future, I won’t be able to stop and notice them.

A friend who works in the north of our country told David, “The older I get, the more convinced I am that success on the mission field doesn’t mean some grand, public accomplishment that I can put my name to; it means simply being faithful in the small things.  Loving my family.  Loving my neighbors.  Loving my church.”

Living in India has been nothing if not humbling thus far.  I don’t really think any fact of our existence here has turned out the way I imagined it would.

And I so love my plans and my lists.  They make me feel good about myself.  They make me feel productive and important.  They give me a means of measuring myself against other people and seeing that I’m doing pretty well.

It’s interesting that God would bring me to a place where I have spent the last eight months feeling very unproductive and very unimportant.  To a place of having to look my self-righteousness square in the face, in all its ugliness.  To a place of having to see just how little I really see and love people for who they are – not for who I want them to be.

I think all of this seeing broke me down to my core for awhile.

And you know what’s left? 

Someone who is learning – very slowly – to just stop.  And to listen to that quiet nudging of the Holy Spirit.  Who can say, “I’ve had everything stripped away, so now I have the time to sit quietly on the floor and play Cars with Judah this morning, and to walk a little slower through the breezeway in case a neighbor wants to chat, and to have my schedule rearranged for a last-minute visitor.”  I have nothing to lose.

“Being faithful in the small things” feels very messy.  It feels uncomfortable and disruptive.  It feels very un-glamorous.  It feels out of my control.

It’s all I really want for my life.