Because Feeling Small is Really Good

Tears stained my cheeks – crying was becoming a habit. One I didn’t particularly enjoy, but perhaps God needed me here. My emotions raw over the hugeness of the dream only He could bring about.

“I feel small,” I confessed to my friend. “When I talk about the dream, the goal God is laying on my heart I feel small.”

I picture myself nine-years-old, my hair in two long braids over each shoulder. Then I dreamed of being the first female major league baseball player. I dreamed it, but every time I was at bat in slow-pitch softball, I closed my eyes because the sound of the ball hitting the bat made me flinch.

When I think about this goal God laid on my heart I feel like I’m nine again. As if I am standing in my daddy’s softball cleats and holding his oversized glove trying to convince others my dream is possible. I can do it. All the while people look at me and know the truth. They know I can’t keep my eyes open to bat. They know my dream is just a fantasy.

I fear condescending smiles. I wonder what others are really thinking about this dream that is beyond me. This dream I can not obtain in my own strength.

Maybe it is there in the smallness that God is really working. His word tells us, “…when I am weak, He is strong…His power is made perfect in weakness…” (2 Corinthians 12:9-10) Maybe the smallness is something to be grasped tight. John the Baptist said, “He [Jesus] must increase, I must decrease.” (John 3:30) Is this what God meant? I must realize how small I am so that He may be big in me.

So my smallness is directly proportional to how big God moves. Yet I fight my smallness. I figure out a way and pray God blesses it. I pray God shows me the way, but in the end I lean on logic rather than God. I walk through doors I decide to walk through and yet even as I walk God is in control, not me.

Whether my dream is for more children or to be God’s instrument to bring 5,000 people to faith, to write 25 books in my lifetime or to raise the kids I have to know God, I cannot do any of it by myself. I must be small so He can do big things.

Yet this smallness cannot keep me from doing the work God calls me to do. As Mark Batterson says in his book The Circle Maker, “I must pray like it depends on God and work like it depends on me.” I can’t do it without God, but I also can’t do it unless I do it.

So I will boast in my smallness. I will proclaim my God is able and I will do the work He lays before me. “For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

How do you feel when your dreams are beyond you? Do you think smallness helps God do big things in you? I can’t wait to hear what you think.

By the way, I am still working on memorizing Psalm 103. I am working on verses 8-14 this week. Would you care to join me?