Birthdays, Incarnation, and Less
35 crept up on me while I was sleeping away surgery-recovery, but maybe that’s fitting anyways.
In my prayer journal from my last birthday, #34, I wrote from Roatan, an island off the coast of Honduras, where we were vacationing at the time, a prayer, that as I look back now, I see its permeation in every part of my last year.
I couldn’t have known then all that would unfold, but what I did know was that I was tired: and not a mere physical fatigue (although that was the case too, and a case of dengue fever in the following weeks would show just how run down my body actually was). No, it was more. It was an exhaustion of mission. I was tired of running in so many different directions, in so many different places, with so many different teams, and so many different people depending on me. I was tired of a geographic spread that left little of me available for the people right in front of me. I was worn-out on using my second-string talents instead of the gifts given to me (there’s a whole argument here on what creative restriction does to our energy depletion). But most of all, I was tired of ignoring that quiet voice of the Holy Spirit calling me to obedience: there was a new beckoning, a new invitation in my life and I wasn’t taking the time to discern it.
Vacation has a way of forcing that. It’s interesting how when we finally get to that all-anticipated moment of rest, our bodies, instead of rejoicing, fall into the abyss - an adrenaline crash, an immune system panic, and a mind offended by silence.
As I sat by the waves of the crashing ocean last December, pushed off the edge and in the figurative abyss, finally the silence gave me room for obedience. And obedience, just to be clear, doesn’t always look like action. For we know, long before movement is stirred, come the prayers and the longings of our hearts. And in that moment, the first still in a long sea of busy, this was my first step in courageous obedience, a prayer:
“Not more, God, but less.”
My prayer for 34 was not wild and daring, or adventurous or bold… it was a desperate plea: for not more, but less.
For my 34th year, I wrote in my prayer journal, that day oceanside, “that in my less, I will be re-awakened to beauty, to community, and to the winds of Your presence.”
That prayer journal entry was just a few lines long. No magnificent prose - no big declaration… but as it always is with the Spirit, the smallest seeds give way to the tallest trees.
~
A whole year later now, awakening from a week of sleep post-surgery, with my birthday nestled somewhere there in-between, I am not groggy. My vision and view of God’s faithfulness in the last year is 20/20.
He answered my plea, and I responded with obedience.
I could write a long laundry list of the manifestation of that, of what it actually looked like, of the tangible progression of action steps… but this post doesn’t serve to convince or persuade you of some holy alignment, so I’ll spare us the details. What I’ll share with you instead is that for 12 months now I have been actively narrowing in and making smaller my circle of influence. Global has become local and travel has been replaced with home. Long work hours have been put to bed, and I have room around my kitchen table again - for hosting, for teaching, for welcome and for real-time-incarnate love.
The world keeps on telling us that bigger is better and the more followers, the wider our impact, and I’m just showing up here this Christmas to remind you that wider is not equivalent to deeper and many is not the way to discipleship and transformation.
There are better things to be sown in small.
In concrete time, place, and people.
Jesus came to the world not the way of grand entry or platform of glamour. He came to a woman, within a family, within a small town discounted by others, to a people oppressed by its rulers. He spent most of his life in obscurity, making a carpenters wages… and when his ministry went public, even then, still, he chose 12 as his people.
There are better things to be sown in small.
In concrete time, place, and people.
And might I add - the sustainability and soul-toll is better for the keeping.
At 34, the baby born in a manger, taught me the mystery of incarnation.
Can you imagine what our world could become if we all committed to being with and being for our families, our friends, and our communities - even and especially in obscurity and poverty?
It’s a lesson in living I’d like to leave in legacy.
~
As I wake up to 35, in that post-surgery daze:
I look back at the trajectory and say yes and amen.
Thank You for bringing me here.
And I look at what is to come, and I commit again:
Not more, but less.
Walk me further into the tunnel, Jesus, where smallness cramps me on every side, but my echo in impact is limitless.
Here’s to 35, here’s to incarnation, here’s to sowing treasure in small fields <3
~
“God of hidden treasures,
a time or two ago
I found a treasure hidden in a field.
I sold everything I had
ran joyfully
and bought the whole field (Matthew 13:44).
It is the field that has given me hope,
not just the treasure.
Treasures need a home
a place to rest
to rise, and grow.
Some of the pilgrims with whom I journey
want the treasure
but reject the field.
Yet because of my trust in the field
the treasure has grown.
The field holds all the answers
to the treasure’s secret.
God of Hidden Meanings,
God of Parables,
Teach us the wisdom of the treasure,
In trusting the field.”
From “A Prayer for the Body of Christ” in “Seasons of Your Heart: Prayers & Reflections” by Macrina Wiederkehr