If You Think You’re Small and Ordinary

“Which hand?” My younger daughter stood facing me, hiding both fists behind her back.

“Hmmm. . .” I played along, tapping my fingertip on my chin. “This one.” I pointed to her left arm.

“Yes!” She swung her fist around and opened her palm. Nestled in the crook of her hand sat two tiny yellow flowers, each just millimeters wide but perfectly formed and detailed—delicate saffron petals with green stems like trailing embroidery threads. She turned her wrist and emptied the flowers into my hand.

“Sweetheart, these are beautiful!”

“They’re for you, Momma! I found them outside. I love you! Bye bye!” And off she ran, back to her toys and grassy yard adventures. I sat in my office chair studying those dainty gifts, so small and ordinary and yet—they might as well have been diamond earrings, precious as they were to me.

Sometimes the little gifts mean the most.

I need to remember that.

On the days when I feel like I have nothing to offer God. When my floor sweeping and lunch packing and smiley-face toast making seems pathetic compared to grander pursuits. I mean, I’m not building an orphanage in Haiti. I’m not delivering gospel tracts to homeless shelters or giving millions of dollars to world outreach. Heck, I’m not even making the money that pays for the Cheerios in my daughter’s breakfast bowl.

I’m just being a mom. Getting up every day and praying that God will help me to honor him with the way I treat my family. Putting one foot ahead of the other, one breath after the last, wiping those bottoms and cutting those crusts and texting “I love you” to my husband.

I am so very small and ordinary.

But to God, I am enormously special.

And so are you.

“He has saved us and called us to a holy life—not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time” (2 Timothy 1:9).

Wow. Think about that. God called us—he chose us (before time even began!)—to live . . . what? A mundane, nothing-to-offer life? No.

A holy life.

And not because we’ve done anything magnificent to prove ourselves. What we call ordinary—the carpooling, casserole-baking, homework-helping life—God calls purposeful. He calls it holy.

Huh.

Imagine that.

Yes, you’re a mom. And that means what you do matters. God sees it. He values it. He knows your heart and he gives you your blessings. Try counting them today, and see if you don’t start to agree that this small and ordinary life is holy indeed.

Later that day, my daughter pressed her hands against my cheeks and leaned in until our noses touched. “Momma? Did you love those flowers? The pretty ones from outside?”

“Oh yes, sweetheart. They are very special.”

“I just know you love them, Mom.”

“You do? How do you know?”

She patted my face with her palm and gazed straight into my eyes. “Because they’re from me.”

Ah. Sweet girl. She gets it.

Blessings,
Becky

This post is brought to you from the Time Out archives.