Image by Neom via Upsplash
Wake up early to get the fire started for breakfast and fill the hand-washing buckets. Cook breakfast and clean up the mess while my husband gets the boys dressed and ready. Spend the next several hours homeschooling the boys while my husband works. Finish hand sewing three throw pillow covers (because we haven’t had enough sun to run the sewing machine). Mend one pair of pants, two pairs of shorts, and reattach three buttons. Start the sourdough for baking tomorrow. Sweep away the endless cobwebs. Fold some laundry. Restart the fire to warm up water for baths. Begin preparing dinner while the water heats and my husband bathes the hooligans who are covered in dirt from a day of play. Share a meal and conversation with teammates, then clean up the dinner mess. Bucket bathe myself. Bedtime routine with the boys. Attempt to quiet my loud mind and sleep, to prepare myself for more of the same the next day.
It’s all very mundane – I know. My life is oriented around serving and supporting my husband, my children, and my team. It doesn’t feel as exciting as being a Bible Translator or a Church Planter. I cannot imagine our sending agency recruits young women by saying, “If you want to move across the world to be a stay-at-home mom, but with no indoor plumbing, electricity, or glass over your windows, and endless venomous snakes for neighbors – we have a job for you!”
But when my husband reports that his language tutor said the sweet, milk tea I made was “simi shadiid” (very lovely!), I genuinely feel I am doing what I have been called to do. At least in this season.
Still, I often feel like my work small and unimportant. Perhaps you have had relatable seasons. Like your contributions didn’t matter. Like you were always an understudy, wondering if you would ever get the lead. Constantly feeling like you needed to be doing more, even though you were already operating at max capacity.
Sometimes, I feel like the widow Elijah approaches in 1 Kings. He asks her for water and bread. She explains she has no bread, just enough flour and oil to feed her and her son one final meal. But miraculously, there is more than enough ingredients for them to continue living.
I wake up feeling like I have so little to offer. But somehow, I get through each day, and able to start the next. Even in the mundane, exhausting seasons of life, God can and will sustain us. Our job is to keep walking in faith.
The well-worn Psalm 119:105 says, “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path,” (ESV). I don’t know about you, but my 21st century mind often forgets the lights that would have been available at the time when this verse was penned were candles, not flood lamps. Even if we imagine a large torch as opposed to a tealight, the terrain of life can impact visibility – sometimes all we see is a few feet in front of us. And we are so easily discouraged by the unknown.
But the least we can do for the One who came, lived, and died as a man, saving our souls from salvation, leaving behind the Holy Spirit and the Written Word, is to keep walking in obedience to the Lord.
Recall with me two more, well-worn passages of Scripture:
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light,” (Matthew 11:28-30, NIV).
“But [the Lord] said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong,” (2 Corinthians 12:9-10, NIV).
Bring your flour and oil. Bring your two mites. Bring what you have, and lay it at His feet. Fear Him, rather than the unknown. Rather than what you lack. He leads you to quiet waters and though dark valleys. His grace is sweet and His mercies are new each morning.
Press on, Friend.
Faithfully,
Joy From Fear 