Little Big Things

I was glad the whole family was in the van when it happened. They can all back me up and confirm that I’m not crazy. It really DID look like a giant snake.

We were enjoying the pretty drive to Cheboygan, minding our own business, when suddenly I gasped, whipped my head around, and hollered, “What was THAT?” The kids’ heads swiveled, trying to figure out what I’d seen. My husband, who has far too much composure to veer of the road the way I would have if someone had shouted in my ear, calmly asked what in the world I was talking about.

Well, I could hardly admit that I was positive I’d seen a big, fat, rainforest-style snake wrapped around the branch of a tree we’d just passed. This is Michigan. There are no giant snakes here. (And if there are, for heaven’s sake don’t tell me about them.)

But when you gasp and holler, you have to explain yourself. So I told them about my snake. We decided we’d better go back and have a look.

We drove slowly, cruising along until we were just across the road from the tree. The kids plastered themselves to the window. There it was. Thick as your arm, mottled black and gray and orange, draped lazily around a branch.

We blinked, and then leaned back in our seats with pink cheeks. Tennis shoes. My giant snake was an old pair of sneakers, tied by the laces and flung into the tree by a giddy passerby.

We drove off, laughing at ourselves because just for a moment we had believed that a bit of footwear was something extraordinary.

I have to admit, I was a little disappointed. Wouldn’t it have been thrilling if I had been right? I knew my eyes were deceiving me, but still, I wanted there to be something special in that tree. I wanted to see a little amazingness to make that day a day worth remembering.

And then, as I write this, I feel the keyboard gliding beneath my fingertips, translating my thoughts into a newspaper column. Amazing. The cats wrestle by my feet, making me smile. I hear a child’s laugh and the tinkle of windchimes. I don’t need a python to make this day memorable. I have what I have every day – the magic of the ordinary. The enduring amazingness of the little things that are, in fact, the big things.

……..

I feel pretty ordinary most days. I’m just your average housewife, puttering along through my days, trying to keep up with my kids and my volunteer roles and the laundry. I don’t mind ordinariness most of the time.

Once in a while, though, I get sunk in a mire of wishing to be more and feeling like less. I don’t want to be Great, with a capital G, but I also don’t want to be a Failure. Capital F. And some days, being ordinary feels like a failure. Like I’m not doing enough. Or being enough. Like I’m just here, taking up space on the planet without really being worth much of anything.

Peter and John are two of my favorite people in the Bible. They were brave and funny and fearless, and they adored their Savior. Heroes, in my eyes. But look:

“When they saw the courage of Peter and John and realized that they were unschooled, ordinary men, they were astonished and they took note that these men had been with Jesus.” Acts 4:13

My heroes were just a couple of ordinary people. Like me.

I’ve been with Jesus, too. And He has been with me. And because of that, my everyday humdrum self is the little thing that is, in fact, a big thing in God’s eyes.

When God looks at you he’s not searching for amazingness. He already found it. It’s in the figure of Jesus on the cross, and it’s draped around your shoulders, marking you as one in whom your God delights.

You, being who He made you to be, are claimed as His by the death of His Son. You may not be spectacular; you may not be changing the world. But God loves ordinary. He uses ordinary.

When God’s looking at you, it’s good to be a shoe in a tree.

First published in the Alpena News, May 4, 2013