Right Where I Am

I was in my late twenties. Round with life filling my womb. The sweet joy of tiny feet pressing my stomach from the inside out. Prince Charming’s hand rubbed my belly, knowing his daughter was being knitted together by the Creator.

Pregnancy brought the beauty of life. It also brought the onslaught of advice. Sometimes graciously accepted and stored in the memory bank. Others would receive my obligatory nod and smile. But there was one piece of wisdom, one nugget, one truth, that has shaped me as a mother.

And it is beginning to shape my entire life.

 

Do not wish ahead for your daughter’s next milestone. Do not mourn phases gone by. Enjoy the moments as they come. Right where you are.

As both of my children grow, I am trying to practice her advice. It’s not that I’m never wistful for those precious moments rocking my babies to sleep. Or that I don’t ever wonder what their teen years will look like—the adults they will become. But I’m trying to savor each stage they’re in right now. At this moment.

For some reason, I find this task easier to do with my children than with the direction my own life takes. While I never yearn for the past, and no amount of money could convince me to go back to high school, I do find myself wondering what my future will be. Even positioning myself for that future.

Because sometimes I think to myself, This can’t be all there is to life, can it? Reining in tantrums. Cleaning toilets. Placing frozen pizza in the oven. Kissing routine goodnights. Grading tests. Driving carpools.

There are days the thought of going to work fills my stomach with stones and my feet with lead. I drag myself through the hours. And all I want to do is stay home with my own two bright lights.

Two bright lights who can send me running for the hills with tantrums, fights, and demands.  While playing one more round of Chutes and Ladders can leave me twitching for hours. Shoulders bending, scooping up toys and children, trying to erase the mess.

The mess I sometimes see as me. And again I ask, This can’t be all there is to life, can it? Then I hear His still small whisper. Like a shaft of light, it illuminates. Hope.

When I wish for the life I believe I should have, I miss the greatness God calls me to right where I am.

Really, Lord? Right where I am?

His answer, on the beam of whispered light, is Yes. Our Creator calls us to be faithful right where we are. In the ordinary. In our spaces of doubt with exhaustion leaking out the corners of our eyes. In the mundane.

And then His answer begins to touch our dreams. Because only when we are faithful in the menial can we be used in the extraordinary.

Luke 10:16 tells us, Whoever is faithful in very little is also faithful in much...I used to believe this only referred to the treasures and talents God gives. But now I am beginning to see so much more. Is not life a treasure? If I’m faithful with my life—every little piece of it, what could God do with me?

For you see, the Bible is filled with ordinary people living out faithful lives even in the mundane. And those are the men and women God chooses to live the astonishing.

The prophet Samuel’s name was called out while he lay asleep on a pallet of straw as a servant in the temple. God anointed the filthy shepherd David in the field while the young, would-be king tended sheep. He called Peter, the Rock, after a day of earning his keep as a fisherman in the hot sun. Mary was going about life in her small town of Galilee. Preparing for a wedding—certainly not entertaining the idea of mothering God.

These ordinary men and women teach us. Their lives whisper this: When we are faithful with the mundane, when we are faithful right where we are—God shows up.

God doesn’t call out those on the fast track to the future of their dreams. He calls those faithful right where they are.  And when we are faithful in the mundane, significance and meaning can—and will—fill our souls.

God meets us there. He comes to the spaces where we feel we don’t matter. He brings us to life as we breathe in the aroma of meaning.

The life of our dreams awaits. We need only be faithful in the life we have. When I am faithful where God puts me, I realize the beauty in this life—Right where I am.

Heather describes herself in this way: I am Human. Flawed. Passionate. Overwhelmed. Creative. Tired. Joy-Filled. Messy. Colorful. Sinful. Redeemed. As a woman living in a world that seems to spin faster with each passing day, she wears more hats than she can care to count, but there are a few favorites...She is the wife of an all-to-human Prince Charming, and the mother of two beautifully-imperfect children. She attempts to teach literature to 130 hurting-yet-amazing teenagers, and writes to understand the song in her heart. Her soul belongs to Jesus, and He is the reason she am able to find Petals of Joy in this journey Heather calls  Life.

You can find Heather blogging at Petals of Joy and on Facebook.