There is a scene in Micha Boyett’s spiritual memoir, Found, when after struggling for a week with feeling guilty and resentful for needing to care of her husband and small son, instead of helping with earthquake cleanup in Haiti, she turns to her husband in church and says, repentant,
“I love you more than my idea of being remarkable”
I barely focused on the next couple paragraphs and that silly sentence flashed across my brain for the next two days.
I tried to tell Justin the same thing tonight, feeling some repentance was due me as well.
He was sprawled out on the floor with Merek, coloring on one of those giant coloring pads that you get hoping it’s big enough your toddler’s crayons wont stray onto the linoleum.
“Honey…”, I start from the kitchen.
[long pause as I try to remember the exact quote]
“What?” he says, after the pause becomes too weighty
“Ugh, never mind”
“No, tell me”
“Never mind”
“Tell me!”
“I can’t remember the exact words of the quote I was going to say! Ok? And now it’s just silly.”
This is what happens when I try to be romantic while I am packaging leftovers and the last burrito will not fit into the yogurt container I am stuffing it into.
I can’t even be remarkable when apologizing for wanting to be remarkable.
I packed the leftovers into the fridge, but I did not do the dishes.
I am twenty eight long weeks through the pregnancy of my second child, and even though I am happy to carry and meet my daughter, my body is decidedly not, this time around. In my mind’s eye, during my pregnancy with Merek, my body was constantly bragging like a four-year old, “Look what I can do! I’m amazing!” And I went around the entire nine month wondering what all the grumpy pregnant women through the ages were complaining about all the time. I never felt huge or clumsy and I slept great without special pillows.
Now all the grumpy, pregnant women through the ages are my soul-sisters, my cheering squad, my kindred spirits stretched across time. In my current mind’s eye my body is sulking in the corner, arms crossed, furious that I dared to do this again, without asking her special permission. ”Pamper me or I’ll make you pay”, she says this time around.
So I don’t do the dishes. I leave them for tomorrow.
I don’t know if I have ever felt more like an unremarkable, giant cliché as I do these days.
I am the swollen-footed, giant, beached whale that is too tired to push herself off the couch even though her suburban toddler is drawing on the wall again with his Crayola crayons.
My 20-year-old self would have just shivered a little if she could read blog posts in the future.
All I know is that when I dreamed of “Standing in a Wild Ocean Life”, I had no idea how cold and windy it could actually get.
What I was picturing back then was not scary. Yes, it was exhausting, rewarding, and “stretching”, in the way us good ol’ evangelical kids used that phrase, but it was big. Big and safe. I was asking for what I wanted and what I thought would be best.
Ministry was safe. Adventure, since my earliest memories, was safe. It was spiritual and it was safe.
This is terrifyingly unremarkable and still very exhausting, without all the bells and whistles and recognition.
This is small and therefore scary.
I’m scared to be small.
I think I was hoping for the Pacific-Northwest , you know. Sitting in a thick, chunky sweater on the beach by a driftwood fire, drinking strong coffee with my other hipster friends.
This seems more like the Bering Sea, not as cool, but still very cold and hard to navigate.
Esta Doutrich 
Really love all of this.
Your thoughts are always golden, accessible, and raw truth. Thank you.
Thank you, dear. Also feel like you might have embellished the grandeur of my thoughts just a little, but I’ll take it 🙂
Haha it spoke to my soul, that’s all.
One thing for sure–your life may be “small” and different than your dreams…but it speaks loudly. And that’s one of the dichotomies of the upside-down kingdom–when we are weak, then He is strong. He is strong in Your weakness. Your body is creating beautiful life, and that is bigger and more grandiose than any remarkable ministry on the other side of the sea. I keep telling myself these same things. You just have an incredibly creative way of saying them–thank you for my inspiration of the day.
Thanks for the encouragement, Jenny!
I like your writing! I am sure you are blessing others with your honesty, and wonderful writing style.
And I like your pictures 😀
I appreciate your response. Sometimes I wonder if people enjoy the posts! God bless you in your journey.
I know exactly what you mean, and it’s interesting because I’ve been having similar thoughts lately and considering doing a blog post on the topic. So I was at a retreat this weekend with a bunch of Christian college students, and the question came up, “where do you just really hope God doesn’t call you?”
I immediately said, “I hope God doesn’t call me to be an invalid again.” But everyone else said things like, “Scary countries like ones in the middle east,” or “going somewhere without anyone I know.” In fact, much of the focus of the weekend seemed to be about stepping out in faith and doing big scary things for God.
But to me, the “big scary things” are only mildly uncomfortable. What truly terrifies me is the idea that God might call me to, say, live in a small isolated town and care for a sick relative. The George Bailey type life, where every time you try to leave a new obligation rears its ugly head.
Which made me wonder, when we talk about doing hard things for God, why do people never mention the difficulty of the mundane?
Ugh, I know. Come over for tea and lets hash it out. I think a big difference is how and where you were raised and how that effected what you see as “scary” and “uncomfortable”. Ministry and scary physical situations is not unknown for me, so it does not hold fear. It’s “normal” for me. The mundane, the life outside of organized ministry is very unknown and uncharted for me, so it feels frightening and boring. I think you and I are a smaller minority though, which is why our side isn’t discussed enough. I think it is important to encourage people to move out of there comfort zone, no matter that looks like for them.
Yes, you guys! I’m in this group, too, and I haven’t really understood it until recently. I’m reading Assimilate or Go Home, and connecting so deeply with this message woven through its stories.
Beautiful post, Esta. ❤
WOW Esta, and Emily: if there’s a topic that could use more writing, it’s this.
Except I sometimes worry that writing about it and getting just the right words for it, is itself just a distraction? Like, “I’m feeling a certain disappointment/disillusionment, but now that I’ve described it really well, I feel great!” Ugh.
We’re taught in school that stories [and by extension life] has to follow the same order: establish a setting and present the characters and have a plot that goes: desire, obstacle, crisis, solution, denouement, or something like that. But I sometimes think to myself that it’s more like, in your youth, everything feels like a plot. But when you get older, it’s a lot more just setting. Like dating my husband was a plot, now he’s my setting. And I’m hungry again for a plot : )
Anyway great post, thanks for putting your writing out there.
You obviously wrote this a year ago. But I saw your name on Facebook and came here to check out what you write now. I am such a fan from the days you wrote from northern Ontario. Somehow I don’t blog-read like I once did. It’s so sad. I love this post!
Unremarkable and exhausting seems to describe much of my life too. Small IS scary. Probably it stretches us more than big, though?
Hey! Yes, I still feel this way a year later, but I am stretching into it and embracing it more, I think? Looking back I wish I would have written more in the north but it was a hard time and a good time, so words did not come easily.
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Hi, I followed Luci here. 🙂 Love this post. I think we as people often overlook or minimize the mundane, but God never.