“How can it be a large career to tell other people about the Rule of Three and a small career to tell one’s own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone and narrow to be everything to someone? No, a woman’s function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute.” ~ G.K. Chesterton

My five year old sat on the couch with me this afternoon in a post nap haze, her sweaty curls smelling of shampoo and play and a little bit of chlorine.

She was uncharacteristically quiet and I asked her what she was thinking about.

“Oh I was just imagining what it would be like if I could start my life over.”

Whoa.

I, too, have been imagining. Not that I could start my life over … this is a far better life I’ve been given than I could ever imagine.

No, I’ve been imagining that maybe I could do more in the life that I have.

That my sort-of-creaky, always-impatient, swift-spinning hamster wheel of  feedthemsomethingreadbookslaundrysneakinanaphalfheartedlymopthefloorsgotothepoolgrocerystorelibrarykissbooboos is not enough.

That my small beginnings are nonstarters. 

That somehow I’m missing a bigger purpose, that I’m myopic, narrow, pedestrian. That I should be working for a Cause, that there is … just … more. 

I have friends who fight sex traffickers and raise money for adoptive parents and fight for special needs children and homeschool a million children at once {too many of these friends to link to} and live in the Congo and … you get the picture. {Again, all amazing. It’s a good jealous, I promise.}

And I want to live Psalm 82:3. 

And then … AND THEN … I look around and I know that God is calling me to be right here. In the thick of it. And there’s bread in the oven and my floors are clean-ish and the laundry is folded clean and my kids watched less tv today and I didn’t yell at them and we did make it to the pool {and I did sneak in a nap} and I am just pretending like I can’t see the dog hair pooling by the bookshelves.

And those things I just accomplished are Everest goals of mine these days and “more” is elusive, because it is not enough, because it is not mine. 

My purpose is gigantic, it’s here in the small beginnings and the routines and the snuggles.  My heart is here.

And maybe I will imagine a day in the distant future that doesn’t involve slap fights in the grocery store and will involve a Cause but I will LIVE in this day and admire my clean-ish floors and read a few more books to the tornadoes who run this town and pat myself on the back because if you showed up on my doorstep, I wouldn’t be embarrassed to let you in.

And I didn’t yell at my kids.

Maybe I will use less run on sentences though. But probably not.

~M