31 Days: This is small.

She was sitting in my grandfather's recliner with my favorite blanket.

She had messy bed hair and was holding a toy.  The dog was sleeping next to her, and I saw cute little toes peeking out of the blanket.  It was a quiet and slow moving morning.  She was simply watching tv and waiting for her sisters to join her.  There was nothing spectacular about this moment--in fact, anyone else in the world may not have noticed, but it made me smile.  


"This is small" is the notion I've been carrying in my heart for months now.  It's been a quiet revolution in my head and mind as I've gone about my daily business.  I'm not reminded of this sort of smallness when I'm frazzled and overwhelmed.  This is the smallness that comes with the sweetness of life.  In those tender and special moments in which you know you are where you need to be, doing what you're supposed to do.

I think we spend a lot of time searching for significance.  We want to make sure we are following our path and destiny.  We want to find our mates and settle in our careers.  We have fear of missing out of the next adventure.  We are so afraid to become less than the Joneses.  We want to be current, we want to be on point, and we want to be to attractive.  We want to make a difference.  And this need for validity beats us down as we fight the feelings of smallness when we recognize that the world is so much bigger than us.

But I'm learning that struggling to keep up with everything I feel like I ought to be doing has never felt as good as the smallness of this moment with my baby girl.  These quiet moments of intimacy.  These parts of our day that the world will never see because they feel so insignificant, but they make our heart smile.

These moments when I stop struggling and embrace my smallness.  

Perhaps this is what smallness is all about, Charlie Brown.

To be continued. . .