Some days, I wake up and pour cereal through blurry eyes and change little bodies out of pajamas and wipe the kitchen counters (again) (and again), and I feel small.
I read about friends staring evil in the eye, unflinching. I read poetry about marriage and ministry and it floods my mind and stays in all the crevices. (And these days, there are many, many crevices.) And of course, I read stories from my friends who are in Sri Lanka right now with World Vision, meeting their sponsored children, answering the hard questions and bearing witness to true beauty.
And my life shrinks in comparison. Who am I? What am I doing with this one and precious life? Wiping counters, changing diapers, breaking up fights between siblings? Really? This is it?
But I've been around long enough now (crevices, remember?) to know a lie when it comes calling. And even though I may spend my days in the most ordinary of ways, I know faithfulness is not ordinary. Love is not the norm. It takes guts to focus on that unswervingly, to remember that who I am matters more than what I do.
When I started this blog five years ago, I named it Love Well after a passage in a favorite book that has marked me. I did it because I know my fickle heart and its forgetfulness and I wanted to keep this close. (Consider it a digital tattoo.)
What matters at the end of the day is this: Have I loved well? Was love the heartbeat of my actions? Did I care more about who I am and who was before me than what I accomplished?
If I can answer yes to that question, my life is not small.
Because love is never small.
