I don’t know about you, but a nagging question that has followed me from the teenage years until now has been “What’s my purpose? Why am I here? What is God’s will for my life?” Many people in the Christian faith might even say, “What is your calling?” Our culture and even Christian culture has made us believe that the more exotic the location, the more famous you are, the bigger your platform or the more money in your bank account, the more God is using your life. It doesn’t help that so many churches drive home the statement that God has big plans for your life! What does that truly mean, and don’t throw Jeremiah 29:11 at me haha.

What is “big” in God’s eyes is surely different than what our society considers important right? When you tell someone that God has big plans for you, what do they imagine? I used to imagine doing big things for God meant helping orphan children in a village in Africa or becoming a nun in some European monastery. The Bible says in Mark 9:35 ” Anyone who wants to be first must be the very last, and the servant of all.” In Ephesians 4:1-2 it says, “As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life worthy of the calling you have received. Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.” These verses make me believe it’s not about the work we necessarily do but how we do it. So that means you can be the cafeteria worker at your kids’ school and be doing the work of God just as much as the task force saving kids from sex slavery.

Knowing this in my head can be hard to translate to my heart but ultimately I know what parents do matters. I might never speak internationally and have a best selling book, although that would be amazing:) but I know that the way I respond to my child when they’ve spilled their drink for the fourth time or how I handle bedtime procrastination…it matters. How my kids grow up to view my spouse and I’s marriage, it matters.

I am not a detail oriented person. I get frustrated when things become tedious. Maybe that’s why I often view God as a “big picture God”. I see Him as creating a ultimate plan for the world but that He leaves the details up to us. However, I do think God cares about the little things and I think He works through the little things. That text sent at just the right time to a friend. That friend who can see right through you and genuinely asks “how are you?” and means it. God putting certain people in your path at just the right moments. No our God is a God of little things, which inspires me to try to remember the little things everyday and not go on auto pilot and drive right past them. What if me being present each day, being the best wife and mother and daughter and sister and friend, is my calling? To be present, to reach out to the community God has placed me in and to rest in that.